“I’m a 30-year old Caucasian male who loves hip-hop, Volkswagens, and Asian women, not necessarily in that order. By Profession I am an engineer, and by faith a Jew.”
Posting this kind of roommate advertisement on Craigslist might bring a lawsuit according to the Fair Housing Act, MU School of Law associate professor Rigel Oliveri said.
Oliveri presented her research on “Discriminatory Housing Advertisements Online: The Lessons of Craigslist” in the first “Diversity in Action” seminar series this semester on Wednesday, held by the Chancellor’s Diversity Initiative.
“Craigslist can’t be sued because it has an immunity in this context,” Oliveri said. “But the individuals who post on these website could be liable.”
Just because it is hard to determine identity online, it doesn’t mean people posting online housing ads that contain discriminatory messages are not liable.
To study whether online housing advertisements still contain discriminatory messages today on the Internet, Oliveri reviewed about 10,000 Craigslist ads in 10 major metropolitan areas and split them between rentals and roommates categories.
Eventually, she found 534 problematic advertisements that contain language that might be against the law.
Those problematic messages contain subjects such as race, religions, sexual orientation, national origin and familial status, which means whether you have children under the age of 18.
From those 535 problematic ads, 91 percent are “roommates wanted” ads and 82 percent are referred to familial status, where Oliveri thinks the two main problems come from.
She said the problematic messages are also more likely to contain self-description of the advertiser than statement of preference of prospective roommates.
Freshman Dominic Haertling said he wasn’t aware that personal ads online could bring lawsuits.
“I (didn’t) know just describing what you would like is discriminatory,” he said.
Haertling said he would be more careful with what he posts on Craigslist in the future.
“I would say more characters that I like,” Haertling said. “And I wouldn’t put race, religion and stuff like that.”
“Diversity in Action” seminar series coordinator Yuan Gao, a Ph.D. student from China, said she has never posted on Craigslist, but she mentioned an email list MU’s Chinese students use to exchange information.
She said it is “a universal phenomenon” for people to look for roommates with a similar background.
“A lot of Chinese students tend to do that,” Gao said. “They want to feel more comfortable at home and to find someone with a similar background, like from the same home country.”
Oliveri suggested legal changes are necessary.
“People who share living space should be exempt,” she said. “The law can’t tell you who you should be live with.”
Back in the 1960s, the Fair Housing Act was only concerned with landlords and tenants, but roommates are included today, Oliveri said.
“The situation is much different now, with more people living with roommates and being able to advertise online as opposed to newspapers,” she said. “But the law doesn’t treat it differently.”
