Hacker News Reader

Do these laws really yield results?

If somebody doesn't want to rent to or hire a person of a certain race they just won't. They may be forced to not be specific in their ad, but in the end they still won't call you back.

View on HN

For a single person renting out one house, they will get away with it. But for an apartment complex, they can get investigated and have secret shoppers come in and then they get in trouble for not treating the two marker customers the same.

Right... This is basically what happens in a neighborhood like Chinatown, where they can't explicitly deny you because you aren't Chinese but you won't be signing a lease any time soon. Maybe it's because I'm currently reading "The Sellout," but I don't think that it's universally bad to have a practice like that. I don't want Chinatown to be filled with white people. It's different when the people being denied housing actually can't find housing anywhere because the practice is so ubiquitous.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com