Alina Arefeva discussed her research linking a possible uptick in racial discrimination to COVID-19 eviction bans on the podcast Forecast Direct.
The podcast is from the University of California, Los Angeles’ Anderson School of Management and Anderson Forecast.
During the episode “Racial Discrimination and Equity in the Housing Market,” Arefeva, an assistant professor of real estate and urban land economics at the Wisconsin School of Business, shared insights from her working paper, “Discrimination Under Eviction Moratoria,” with host Sayantani.
The study, along with co-authors Kay Jowers, Qihui Hu, and WSB’s Christopher Timmins, looked at data comprised of 25,000 landlord inquiries made in the spring and summer of 2020 across the 50 biggest cities in the United States. At that time, federal residential eviction bans for nonpayment—known as “eviction moratoria”—were instituted to help renters, many of whom struggled to pay rent when their hours were reduced or jobs eliminated due to the pandemic. Arefeva and her co-authors’ study suggested such bans increased discrimination toward tenants by landlords, even more so when the tenants were Black and Black males in particular.
“My original motivation for really all of my research, but also included in this paper, is that every person has a place to call home—and one impediment to that is discrimination,” Arefeva said. “Even though we have the Fair Housing Act from a long time ago, we can still see discrimination at different stages of the housing market, starting from the search to going through negotiations of rental prices and appraisals.”
Arefeva’s research focuses on the interaction of institutions and economic policies with real estate and financial markets. She earned her doctorate in economics from Stanford University. Prior to WSB, Arefeva served as an assistant professor with the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School.
Watch the video:
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