American cities may be becoming more diverse, but some of the nation’s largest housing markets are among the most racially segregated, according to a new study released by Apartment List, an online rental marketplace. Apartment List’s analysis found “significant patterns of residential segregation” among major metro areas, despite these larger metros earning reputations as cultural “melting pots.”
For the study, Apartment List analyzed census data and its own data of 66 million users in more than 40 cities to see how housing costs and homeownership rates vary within metros based on tract-level racial composition. They concluded that the five most segregated housing markets are Milwaukee, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and Cleveland.
“Although this year represents the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, we still have a long way to go to ensure that equality of opportunity is not negatively impacted by the neighborhood in which a person is raised,” Chris Salviati, Apartment List’s housing economist, writes about the findings.
“The presence of residentially segregated neighborhoods affects all minority groups, but the issue is most extreme for black households,” Salviati notes. “Black populations are the most segregated minority group in all of the nation’s 25 largest metros, except for Phoenix, where the Hispanic segregation index is highest.”
Metros with higher levels of segregation tend to have larger gaps in homeownership rates between white and minority households, according to the analysis. Across the U.S., 72.4 percent of white households own homes, compared to 57.3 percent of Asian households, 48.4 percent of Hispanic households, and 42.2 percent of black households, Apartment List’s study found.
Salviati proposed a few options for counteracting the negative effects of residential segregation, such as expanding benefits for low-income rental assistance to allow recipients to use those benefits to move to high-opportunity neighborhoods: “Policies aimed at increasing the supply of affordable housing while also prioritizing the creation of more economically-mixed neighborhoods could go a long way toward addressing the persistent problem of residential segregation.”
Source: “The Persistent Effects of Residential Segregation,” Apartment List (May 23, 2018)
