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

The 40 sq metre apartment had everything that Hamado Dipama was looking for: one bedroom, a bath and a good location in the southern German city of Augsburg. When he called to set up a viewing, however, the landlord kept asking him where he was from.

“It was really bizarre,” said Dipama. “I told him that I didn’t know what that had to do with his rental. And he hung up on me.”

Dipama, originally from Burkina Faso, swiftly realised he had overlooked a stipulation listed plainly in the 2019 newspaper advert: “Germans only.”

It was a window – albeit far more overt than usual – into the kind of discrimination that racialised minorities across Europe have long faced in the housing market. In recent years, as cities across the continent grapple with a shortage of decent, affordable housing, campaigners warn that the housing crisis is having a disproportionate effect on people of colour and other minorities.

For these communities, “it’s a dual crisis”, said Magda Boulabiza, of the European Network Against Racism. “Discrimination means racialised minorities are less able to access housing. And then this intersects with income inequalities.”

A 2017 EU-wide survey of 25,500 people with an immigrant or ethnic minority background found nearly a quarter of respondents said that, in the previous five years, they had faced discrimination when it came to accessing housing – from being denied the chance to view flats to rejections that came after revealing their background.

This discrimination came as minorities were already struggling with a greater risk of poverty, said Boulabiza, describing racism as a “tentacular octopus” that also left them more likely to have precarious or underpaid employment and face segregation when it came to educational opportunities.

“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.”

In France, 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.

The same exercise in Spain yielded similar findings, while a 2020 survey carried out by Germany’s federal anti-discrimination agency found that housing discrimination had affected a third of people with a migrant background. “Often, a foreign-sounding name is enough to not be invited to a flat viewing,” said Bernhard Franke, the then acting head of the agency. “Even openly racist flat advertisements are still part of everyday life.”

In the French experiment, the response rate remained lower for the fictitious north African applicant than for those with traditionally French names – even when the former cited their work as a civil servant, suggesting financial stability, and the latter made no mention of employment, said Yannick L’Horty, an economics professor at the Université Gustave Eiffel.

“It was a surprise,” he said. “So this phenomenon is therefore not linked to a person’s ability to pay, but an aversion to their origin.”

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”.

This discrimination can also leave others, particularly Sinti, Roma and Travellers, at greater risk of ending up in substandard housing, while asylum seekers have increasingly struggled with homelessness in countries such as Ireland and Belgium.

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.

L’Horty pointed to the leader of France’s far-right National Rally party as an example: “For Marine Le Pen, these are always the guilty ones. But when you look at discrimination, you can see that they are really the victim when it comes to getting a job or an apartment.”

In the Netherlands, researchers have found that people with Moroccan or Turkish last names were less likely to be invited to view rental homes, said Hanneke Felten, a researcher with Movisie, a non profit research centre in the country.

The discrimination was seemingly tied to the rental market, she said. “When you sell your house, you don’t have any relationship with the people who have bought the house,” she said. “But when you’re prejudiced and have stereotypes about people from certain backgrounds, you probably don’t want to rent them your house.”

As housing prices soar across the Netherlands, “the idea has also been pushed that migration is the cause of the housing crisis”, said Felten. Despite being untrue, the perception from several experts is that this could have helped Geert Wilders and his far-right PVV party emerge as the most voted-for party in last year’s elections, she said.

The result was what Felten described as a “double punishment”, with the housing crisis often forcing people of colour to work harder to secure increasingly scarce housing while also wrestling with the increasing normalisation of far-right, anti-immigrant parties and their views.

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.”

As anti-immigrant parties such as the PVV in the Netherlands and Chega in Portugal 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.

For those pushed to the margins of the housing market, the consequences could be far-reaching, said Mikel Mazkiarán, of SOS Racismo Gipuzkoa in northern Spain.

He pointed to family reunification requirements for migrants, including refugees, in Spain as an example. “Once someone has a certain level of stability and an income, they want to bring their family to join them. But Spanish immigration law requires them to have housing, though it can be rented,” he said. “But with the difficulties in accessing housing? Well, it means that there are a lot of reunification processes that can’t be carried out.”

Complicating matters are the scant options available to those who wish to challenge the discrimination they’ve faced in the housing market. In many countries across Europe, the sole option is a lengthy and costly legal battle – one that often distracts from the immediate need for housing.

Even so, for Dipama in Germany, doing nothing was not an option after he came across the “Germans Only” advert in the newspaper. “I knew a legal action would be difficult,” he said. “But if we turn a blind eye to it, we won’t solve the problem.”

In 2019, after an eight-month legal battle, a Bavarian court ordered the landlord to pay Dipama €1,000 (£850) and ruled that the man could be fined up to €250,000 or jailed for up to six months if he again posted an advert deemed discriminatory.

It was a bittersweet feeling for Dipama, who today works as an anti-racism and anti-discrimination adviser. “It was my bad luck but also it was my chance to take on this issue,” he said.

While it felt as if he had obtained justice, he was quick to point to the bigger picture. “Unfortunately the problem is still there. But the difference is that people do it more subtly, they camouflage their intentions much more,” he said. “So the fight continues.”