A new National Bureau of Economic Research study by economists
We provide evidence of intensified discriminatory behavior by landlords in the rental housing market during the eviction moratoria instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data collected from an experiment that involved more than 25,000 inquiries of landlords in the 50 largest cities in the United States in the spring and summer of 2020, our analysis shows that the implementation of an eviction moratorium significantly disadvantaged African Americans in the housing search process. A housing search model explains this result, showing that discrimination is worsened when landlords cannot evict tenants for the duration of the eviction moratorium.
The authors are likely to revise the study before final publication. But their results should not be surprising. Eviction moratoria make it difficult or impossible for landlords to evict tenants who default on the rent. That, in turn, leads property owners to be more wary of renting to people who are disproportionately likely to default, such as poor people. If blacks are, on average, poorer than whites or more likely to default for other reasons, landlords will be more reluctant to rent to them at a time when they cannot resort to eviction to deal with default. And studies do in fact suggest…
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