Readers with an interest in the intersection of property, fair housing, and cyberspace may find interesting a paper recently posted on SSRN and authored by Missouri law professor Rigel Oliveri (pictured), titled Discriminatory Housing Advertisements On-Line: Lessons from Craigslist. Here's the abstract:
The Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to publish discriminatory housing
advertisements. This has long been applied to newspapers, which have
effectively screened all discriminatory housing ads from sight. However, in 1996 Congress created a loophole when it immunized website
operators from liability for the content posted to their sites by third
parties. Without publisher liability, websites have no incentive to
screen out discriminatory housing ads. The result is that such ads are
proliferating in cyberspace.
While this situation is
problematic from a fair housing standpoint, it presents a valuable
opportunity. For the first time in a generation discriminatory housing
advertisements are out in the open and available for analysis. This
article contains a comprehensive review of discriminatory housing ads
appearing on the popular website craigslist, which yields a number of
interesting findings, including: (1) The vast majority of those who
post discriminatory on-line advertisements for housing are placed by
people seeking roommates. (2) The overwhelming majority of problematic
ads discriminate on the basis of familial status. There are very few
that discriminate based on race, ethnicity, or religion. (3) The few
roommate ads that do mention race, ethnicity, or religion are more
likely to discriminate in favor of minority groups. Thus, they appear
more as expressions of individual diversity of backgrounds and beliefs
than exclusionary tools of a majoritarian power structure.
This
information can and should inform changes to the legislative and
enforcement regime for dealing with discriminatory housing
advertisements. For example, we should recognize that the roommate
relationship is different from traditional rental housing, and accord
roommate-seekers protection from the law – protection which is
currently given to small landlords (who arguably do not need it) but
not co-lessees. Fair housing advocates also must address the unique
problems presented by familial status as a protected category, both in
terms of public awareness and acceptance of the law.
The article is being published by the Indiana Law Review.