The Costs of Seeking Shelter for Renters With Discrediting Background Records

Abstract

This study illuminates an understudied pathway through which disadvantage is reproduced in the rental housing market: the housing search, application, and tenant screening process. Using in-depth interviews with 25 housing-seekers with criminal conviction records, past evictions, and damaged credit histories, this article examines the direct role of the rental housing search and application process in reproducing economic precarity and social disadvantage among renters with discrediting background records, beyond delimiting their housing options. Its findings suggest that navigating the housing search from a position of acute market disadvantage comes with significant costs for this population, including the financial burden of repeated application fees and the psychological strains associated with the specter of indefinite housing insecurity. The findings also demonstrate how the housing search process may undermine the willingness of stigmatized renters to contest exploitative or unlawful rental practices by reinforcing awareness of their degraded status in the rental market.

Predatory Inclusion in the Market for Rental Housing: A Multicity Empirical Test

“…Indeed, a great deal of research has revealed how policy interventions with the stated goal of increasing choice within markets have the unintended consequences of consolidating the power of private service providers (Centeno and Cohen 2012; Hacker 2002; Rich and Jennings 2015; Young and Chen 2020; see also Merton 1936). This is especially pronounced in housing markets where consumers are usually unaware of the full range of housing options available to them (Besbris 2020; Krysan and Crowder 2017), landlords exercise a great deal of discretion in to whom they lease their available housing units (Garboden and Rosen 2018b; Reosti 2021), and renters seek housing under various constraints (DeLuca and Jang-Trettien 2020; DeLuca, Wood, and Rosenblatt 2019; Harvey et al 2020).…”

‘I’m Not a Tenant They Can Just Run Over’: Low-Income Renters’ Experiences of and Resistance to Racialized Dispossessing

“…3 The experience of racialized dispossession in housing-the loss of physical home through eviction or foreclosure (Desmond and Kimbro, 2015;Rugh, 2015) or the loss of control, autonomy, or sense of self when searching for or seeking to maintain access to secure housing (e.g. Reosti, 2021), both of which disproportionately harm people of color-has devastating consequences. These consequences extend far beyond the realm of housing, contributing to racialized inequalities in multiple spheres, including socioeconomic status and wealth, health, and education (Bachelder et al, 2016;Connolly, 2014;Dantzler, 2021;Desmond and Kimbro, 2015;Korver-Glenn et al, 2023;Krysan and Crowder, 2017;Ladner, 1971;Reosti, 2021;Rugh, 2015;Taylor, 2019).…”

“…Reosti, 2021), both of which disproportionately harm people of color-has devastating consequences. These consequences extend far beyond the realm of housing, contributing to racialized inequalities in multiple spheres, including socioeconomic status and wealth, health, and education (Bachelder et al, 2016;Connolly, 2014;Dantzler, 2021;Desmond and Kimbro, 2015;Korver-Glenn et al, 2023;Krysan and Crowder, 2017;Ladner, 1971;Reosti, 2021;Rugh, 2015;Taylor, 2019).…”

“…Bonilla-Silva, 2004), and the anti-Blackness that infuses housing (Howell and Teresa, 2022). For instance, in the realm of rental housing-where landlord-renter economic and legal imbalances are systemic (Bezdek, 1992;Greif, 2022;Martinez, 2020;Reosti, 2021)-research has demonstrated that landlord and property manager discretion in screening processes (Reosti, 2021) allows them to rely on anti-Black and racist stereotypes to systematically deny housing to prospective Black renters and other renters of color (Faber and Mercier, 2022) or to steer low-income Black renters into houses located in high-crime areas (Rosen, 2014). They also use this discretion when deciding whom to evict (Desmond, 2012(Desmond, , 2016.…”

“…Second, prior research on how people who experience discriminatory housing racialization or dispossession choose to exert their agency in response to the harms they experience has been limited. This is a particularly important gap to fill in the context of rental housing, where landlordrenter economic and legal imbalances are systemic (Bezdek, 1992;Greif, 2022;Grineski and Hernández, 2010;Martinez, 2020;Reosti, 2021). Alongside centering renter agency and autonomy (Márquez, 2014; see also Dorries et al, 2022), such an investigation can provide clues on both the range of options renters perceive as available to them and the 'efficacy of tenant protection or antidiscrimination laws that largely depend on victim complaints for enforcement' (Reosti, 2021: 248).…”