The Austrian housing market suffers from racist discrimination, especially for people with Muslim backgrounds, a study commissioned by the Ombud for Equal Treatment has shown.
In early 2023, 157 housing advertisements in the major Austrian cities of Graz, Vienna, Innsbruck and Linz were responded to by two fake profiles, public broadcaster ORFThe first profile"Muhammad Asif" received an appointment in only 50 percent of the cases. The second profile with the fictitious name"Michael Gruber", who always called after"Asif", always received an appointment.
"People who are discriminated against outside the workplace because of their ethnicity report this to us most often in connection with the search for an apartment," Sandra Konstatzky, the study's director, told ORF. "Because individual cases are often difficult to prove, we wanted to use this study to show how often discrimination occurs in the housing market,"she added.