‘Double punishment’: the racial discrimination in Europe’s rental housing market

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People of colour are disproportionately affected by the crisis, even as far-right parties seek to scapegoat them, campaigners warn

Hamado Dipama, who is from Burkina Faso, realised he had overlooked the line in a newspaper advert saying: ‘Germans only.’Hamado Dipama, who is from Burkina Faso, realised he had overlooked the line in a newspaper advert saying: ‘Germans only.’

Dipama, originally from Burkina Faso, swiftly realised he had overlooked a stipulation listed plainly in the 2019 newspaper advert: “Germans only.” “And therefore, in a neoliberal market where housing has been made into this commodity that we can put at any price we want, this results in them not being able to match the prices that are asked for,” she said. “And when they can, to be racially discriminated against.”, an experiment carried out by researchers in 2016 found that a fictional profile with a north African-sounding name received 27% fewer responses to housing ad inquiries, while another with a sub-Saharan name received 32% fewer.

As a result, say campaigners, minorities could find themselves unwittingly relegated to areas of cities that might be perceived as less desirable, in effect “sharpening segregation”.Yet far from attracting compassion and calls to action, the disproportionate impact that the housing crisis is having on racialised minorities is drowned out in many European countries by politicians seeking to blame migrants, including asylum seekers, for the shortage of accommodation.

Boulabiza linked the recent gains of the far right to the continent’s failure to fully confront its past. “This lack of reckoning with colonial and racist history, I think, has enabled the far right to fester in this wound.”swell in popularity, their success jars with laws that aim to prohibit discriminatory practices. “It tells the landlord, essentially, you can be racist and you won’t be punished,” said Boulabiza.as an example.

 

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