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A sign advertises apartments in North Portland last year. New tests show people of color and others often face discrimination when seeking rental housing.

(Elliot Njus/Staff)

A new report confirms that black and Latino renters continue to face disproportionate barriers in Portland's rental market four years after city officials pledged to eliminate housing discrimination.

Read the updated story with details about why the city says it won't conduct annual testing going forward.

Fair housing coverage

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Undercover testing determined that landlords gave preferential treatment to prospective renters who were white in 12 of 25 cases, or 48 percent of tests, according to results released Tuesday by the Portland Housing Bureau. (See full results at the end of this story.)

Those figures add credence to Portland's first-ever audit, released in 2011, which officials eventually dismissed as unreliable. The 2011 report found that Latino and black renters faced differential treatment in 32 of 50 tests, or 64 percent.

Portland's new analysis also found that people with disabilities and families with children faced barriers but at levels far below those for people of color. Testing found differential treatment in seven of 26 cases, or 27 percent of tests.

"I am deeply troubled by the results of this testing," Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who oversees the Housing Bureau, said in a prepared statement.

The long-awaited statistics offer the most definitive look at the prevalence of discrimination in Portland's rental market since city officials pledged "bold" action in the wake of the 2011 audit.

While the 2011 results initially alarmed city officials and community members alike, city leaders faced harsh criticism for not immediately going after bad landlords.

This time around, the Fair Housing Council of Oregon, which conducted the testing, has recommended filing a formal complaint against one landlord with the Bureau of Labor and Industries.

Because it often takes a documented pattern of uneven treatment by landlords to pursue civil action, fair-housing officials recommend more follow-up testing.

Portland Commissioner Dan Saltzman oversees the Housing Bureau.

Audit testing works by pairing two prospective renters who each seek housing from the same landlord, with one renter white and one from a protected class. Testers share similarities, such as age, gender and income, to help reveal if they are treated differently based on other factors -- such as race or disability.

Although Commissioner Nick Fish, in charge of the Portland Housing Bureau in 2011, and the City Council pledged annual audit testing, the newly released results are the first in four years.

The testing occurred between October 2013 and December 2014.

Across all categories, testers reported differential treatment in 19 of 51 cases. Latinos faced barriers in seven of 12 tests; blacks in five of 13; families in four of 14; and people with disabilities in three of 12.

Fair housing officials recommended follow-up testing in each of the 19 incidents with positive results, plus eight inconclusive tests.

But because of limited vacancies in Portland's white-hot rental market, just 12 follow-up tests occurred. Four cases tested positive for differential treatment, all involving Latinos.

As an example, two housing providers required renters to provide additional documentation or extra deposits if they couldn't produce a Social Security card that had been issued earlier than the past five years. In another case, a Latina tester was asked for her Social Security number to run a credit check immediately, but the white tester wasn't.

The results will be reviewed Tuesday by Portland's Fair Housing Advocacy Committee.

"Everyone should have the same access to housing of their choice and should not be treated differently based on the color of their skin, their national origin, the size of their family, or their disability," Saltzman said in his statement.

-- Brad Schmidt

503-294-7628

@cityhallwatch

Portland tests for housing bias Protected class Number of tests Positive* Negative Inconclusive Percent positive Black 13 5 5 3 38% Latino 12 7 3 2 58% Familial status 14 4 7 3 29% Disability 12 3 9 0 25% Totals 51 19 24 8 37% (avg.) *Testers in protected class faced different treatment