Discrimination against people with mental, physical or visual disabilities in the French rental housing market: field experiment

AbstractWe implement correspondence testing to detect and assess the extent of discrimination against people with disabilities in the French rental housing market. By sending 1,750 emails in a matched-pair procedure, we provide evidence of significant and extensive discrimination against blind people with a guide dog, individuals with mental disabilities, and individuals with motor impairments in the process of rented housing allocation. However, the primary cause of discrimination against blind individuals appears to stem from the presence of the guide dog, rather than the disability itself. Our results are also consistent with the presence of statistical discrimination (particularly based on financial means). We find that absolute discrimination against disabled applicants increases in accordance with the level of rent, while real estate agents discriminate significantly less against disabled applicants than private landlords.Keywords: Disabilitydiscriminationtestinghousing marketfield experimentJEL CLASSIFICATION: C93C12J14R21 Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 French law n° 2008-496 of May 27, 2008: ‘Constitutes direct discrimination the situation in which, on the basis of their origin, gender, disability, sexual orientation, etc., one person is treated less favorably than another is, has been or will have been in a comparable situation. Constitutes indirect discrimination a provision, a criterion or a practice that is neutral in appearance, but likely to entail, for one of the reasons mentioned in the first paragraph, a particular disadvantage for people compared to other people, unless this provision, this criterion or this practice is objectively justified by a legitimate aim and that the means to achieve this aim are necessary and appropriate.’2 For instance, on June 28, 2005, the 17th Correctional Chamber of the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris condemned a landlord who had refused to rent an apartment in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, located on the 6th floor with an elevator, on the grounds that the prospective tenant was a disabled person.3 By able-bodied person, we mean a person without physical and/or mental disabilities.4 https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/118472-Presentation.pdf5 By first stage, we mean the stage of expression of interest, where the applicant expresses their interest and contacts the landlord, who chooses to reply or not. The second stage usually involves the selected applicants visiting the rented property and the signing of a rental agreement between the landlord and the selected applicant. Therefore, while we measure the extent of discrimination at the first stage of the process, further discrimination can still happen at the second stage.6 Indeed, this study compares response rates for disabled applicants and able-bodied applicants when the disabled applicant is more qualified for the housing – for example, having a higher level of income or credit score – than the able-bodied applicant. The purpose of this study was more to prove the existence of discrimination by highlighting the cases where a less-qualified able-bodied applicant was chosen compared to a more-qualified disabled applicant, and not to calculate the extent of the phenomenon.7 Note that a subsequent experiment conducted by Challe et al. (Citation2023) provided evidence of discrimination through a correspondence test that focused on a single region in France, specifically addressing the case of visually impaired individuals. It is noteworthy that evidence for other types of disabilities across France is missing. A more extensive discussion of this paper can be found in the literature review.8 See also Bertrand et al. (Citation2005) for an acknowledgment of this form of discrimination in economics.9 The extent and impact of this type of discrimination is difficult to analyze (see Zschirnt, Citation2019 and Hanson et al., Citation2011, for an in-depth analysis of this type of discrimination using a correspondence testing method).10 Indeed, in this last case, it is almost impossible to know if negative responses or non-responses are due to real discriminatory behavior or rather because the apartments are really not accessible.11 Adding ‘able to maintain his own apartment’ may render the mental disability more benign. However, we wanted to test discrimination against single and autonomous people so that we could compare the prejudice associated with each type of disability.Additional informationNotes on contributorsAlexandre FlageAlexandre Flage is an assistant professor in the Université de Lorraine and member of BETA. His research focuses on housing economics, discrimination and experimental economics.Julie Le GalloJulie Le Gallo is a full professor in the Institut Agro Dijon and member of CESAER. Her research focuses on housing economics, spatial economics and local public economics, with a special emphasis on spatial data econometrics and impact evaluation.