'Suffering double punishment' Racial prejudice pervades the rental market

The 40 sq metre apartment had everything Hamado Dipama was looking for: one bedroom, a bath and a good location in the southern German city of Augsburg.

- Ashifa Kassam

When he called to set up a viewing, however, the landlord kept asking him where he was from.

"It was bizarre," said Dipama. "I told him that I didn't know what that had to do with his rental. And he hung up on me." Dipama, originally from Burkina Faso, swiftly realised he had overlooked a stipulation listed plainly in the 2019 newspaper advert: "Germans Only."

It was a window - albeit far more overt than usual - into the kind of discrimination that racialised minorities across Europe have long faced in the housing market. In recent years, as cities across the European Union grapple with a shortage of decent, affordable housing, campaigners warn that the housing crisis is having a disproportionate effect on people of colour and other minorities.

For these communities, "it's a dual crisis", said Magda Boulabiza, of the European Network Against Racism. "Discrimination means racialised minorities are less able to access housing. And then this intersects with income inequalities."

A 2017 EU-wide survey of 25,500 people with an immigrant or ethnic minority background found nearly a quarter of respondents said that, in the previous five years, they had faced discrimination when it came to accessing housing - from being denied the chance to view flats to rejections that came after revealing their background.

This discrimination came as minorities were already struggling with a greater risk of poverty, said Boulabiza, describing racism as a "tentacular octopus" that also left them more likely to have precarious or underpaid employment and face segregation when it came to educational opportunities.

"In a neoliberal market where housing has been made into this commodity that we can put at any price we want, this results in them not being able to match the prices that are asked for," she said. "And when they can, to be racially discriminated against."