G. H. I. Marital Status Distribution of FHA [sec.203 (b)] Mortgagors (1972) Marital Status of Women in 5 SMSAS (1970). Age and Sex of Families Moving into Rent Supplement Housing in Two HUD Regions: October 1, 1973 to September 3, 1974 . List of States with Fair Housing Laws SUMMARY 1. What this Report is About This Report is about the problems women in American cities face when they try to acquire and maintain a decent place to live. It is also a Report about what we as a Nation can do about these problems. action on It is, candidly then, a call for action We have reached our conclusions after a year of investigations under a contract with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD]. During the course of our investigations we have listened to hundreds of women, in public hearings and less public workshops in Atlanta, St. Louis, San Antonio, San Francisco and New York. We heard them relate their experiences and those of others in scores of transactions involving attempts to buy a house or rent an apartment or secure a mortgage or purchase casualty insurance or get the plumbing fixed only to encounter sex bias in one shape or another. We learned that while racial minorities are sensitive to duplicity on the part of the "housing gatekeeper", the white woman finds discrimination a hard thing to comprehend. And others described the additional constraints faced by women who are poor, or Latin, or lesbians, or single parents, or old. We have also heard from men. Some, husbands of working wives, spoke as victims of lender discrimination. But most were spokesmen from the shelter delivery system planners, developers, brokers, lenders, trade association officials -- who generally denied any knowledge of sexist practices or wrote them off as historical practices which have been abandoned. And where explanations for unequal treatment were volunteered, we found them anchored in myths about women no longer supported in fact. We have drawn heavily on these conversations in our Report. Since few will read the 1260 pages of transcripts or listen to the hours of workshop tapes, we have liberally used witness testimony both to describe "what happened" and to draw conclusions about "why". We have worked in a field where statistics are few and previous studies are fewer. We have tried to build, nevertheless, on what others have discovered before us. Their contributions are spread throughout the text, and readers wishing depth where we but expose the surface are referred to the references in the notes at the end of each chapter as well as items in the selected Bibliography attached as Appendix M. 2. Our Findings and Recommendations It [sex bias in housing] is alive and well. The Women are having problems. These four words perhaps best summarize our findings which, taken together, yield a bleak portrayal of the inequities women face in our cities' housing markets. Whether as consumers of the product or as a participant in the shelter process, the American woman is a second class citizen. Some inequities are the consequence of individual male prejudices. Others are entrenched in institutional practices, underpinned by sexual stereotypes, which result in women being detrimentally viewed as statistical abstractions rather than as individuals. Our investigations focused on five metropolitan areas. Yet the common barriers faced by women in each city compel our conclusion that this is a national problem. Our chief findings are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Women in the cities studied have faced, in the Discrimination against women, historically, has Women, generally, are not aware of the nature or extent of sex discrimination. Nor have they been informed of existing legal remedies applicable to such conduct. Myths and stereotypes about women are the under- Many are not now, nor have been, factu Neither public agencies nor private organizations Women outside a male-headed household represent |