NORTHAMPTON, Mass.— In January, Community Legal Aid (CLA), a free legal aid provider for residents of central and western Massachusetts, published a report on housing discrimination from its Fair Housing Division. 178 tests were conducted from October 2024 to September 2025 to determine how prevalent discrimination based on protected classes was in potential renters’ housing searches. The report finds that 28.7% of tests showed evidence of housing discrimination.
On a federal level, protected characteristics include race, sex, national origin, familial status, and disability. Beyond this, Massachusetts state laws include age, marital status, sources of income, sexual orientation, gender identity, military status, ancestry, and genetic information as protected characteristics from discrimination.
CLA’s tests were conducted by assigning pairs of participants, one as a baseline and another from a protected class, to apply for the same rental property. The pairs had similar characteristics such as income, credit score, etc., except for the protected characteristic.
The protected class individual also made clear that they were a member of a protected class. Each member of the pair would apply for the same housing opportunity and report the landlord’s response to CLA.
Some examples of discrimination involve a landlord telling a woman with an emotional support animal that she would need to hire a lawyer to proceed with the housing application. Another landlord told a Latina that she would need to provide proof of income with her application, when multiple white applicants submitted applications without proof of income. A third landlord simply stopped responding to an applicant once the applicant revealed that she had a Section 8 voucher.
Discrimination in a person’s housing search cannot, however, be taken in isolation. A home is not merely a place to remove oneself from the public; it is an inherently political space. Where you live determines how and who you can vote for, what local or state policies apply to you, where you and your family can access resources, get an education, or find a job, etc. Discrimination in finding a home has a plethora of downwind consequences.
A new housing crisis?
It is fashionable now to talk about a “Housing Crisis” in America, where the average cost of homes has far exceeded the average family’s income. Analysts point to this divergence beginning in the early 2000s and being exacerbated by the Great Recession.
Yet this analysis would suggest that the housing crisis is a relatively new development. It may be so, but only for the middle class. For marginalized and disadvantaged communities, there has always been a housing crisis.
Over the years, previously integrated communities became segregated and new public housing projects were overtly discriminatory. Following this, redlining became prominent across the country, a practice that did not end until the late 1970s and early 1980s.
And while these practices happened in the past, their effects are still felt today. Last year, a preliminary report from Northampton’s Commission for Study of Reparations found 240 deeds in the city that referenced older deeds to the property, which in turn explicitly or implicitly forbid people of color from owning the property. Some of the deeds, which referred to older, racist ones, were recorded as recently as 2020.
Discrimination plays another role in housing searches: where housing opportunities are available in the first place. A 2018 study analyzed several years of public comment at zoning and planning boards in eastern Massachusetts that were discussing affordable housing projects.
The study found that “meeting participants are unrepresentative of the broader public in a variety of ways. They are more likely to be older, male, longtime residents, voters in local elections, and homeowners. Moreover, these individuals overwhelmingly oppose the construction of new housing: almost two-thirds of these participants speak out in opposition to new housing development.”
Also, those who spoke at public comment are overwhelmingly white; about 95% of participants were white compared to the 80% of the population that was white. Broadly speaking, those who benefited from the discriminatory housing practices of previous decades were the most likely to exercise their political liberty.
Some of the public comments that the study cited may have been using racially coded language when opposing public housing, for example, arguing that the “neighborhood character” would change. Other commentators were much more overt in their racism.
“One man in Beverly—a town that is 83% white—critiqued the design of a building as ‘ridiculous’ and said ‘Beverly is going to look like Chelsea.’ 62% of Chelsea’s population is Latino (and Chelsea is six towns away). He went on to ask if ‘there is a restriction put on the building that there is to be no Section 8 housing in the building,’” the study states.
Years of these public comment battles have created a disparate rental environment. Massachusetts now has one of the widest gaps in median rents between towns. A 3-bedroom apartment in Cambridge goes for $5,500 a month, while the same apartment in Springfield (the poorest city in the state) rents for $2,472, a difference of $3000 dollars in a two-hour drive.
All this paints a grim picture for marginalized communities that occupy the majority of affordable housing. Discrimination exists not only in interpersonal landlord-tenant relationships, but also in where housing is constructed. Affordable housing is pushed out of wealthy communities, limiting access to well-paying jobs and high-quality education that would provide the tools a family could use to move beyond affordable housing.
To combat this crisis, the administration of Governor Maura Healey released a comprehensive housing plan last year. The goal is to add 222,000 homes between 2025 and 2035 (compared to the 190,000 units constructed between 2010 and 2020). While this is a step in the right direction, simply creating more housing will not end the housing crisis. To do so, the root of the problem must be addressed.
The underlying cause
Under capitalism, housing is one of the most expensive and most durable commodities. And as Marx pointed out, commodities have the dual aspect of use value and exchange value. A home is not merely a place to live, but also a financial investment. After all, homeownership is a core aspect of the “American Dream,” and a home can be a valuable investment tool in furthering a family’s education and financial opportunities.
The contradiction between a home as a place to live and a home as a financial investment is the origin of the housing crisis. This contradiction explains the overwhelming antagonism of public housing from homeowners: affordable housing is perceived to lower property value or attract people who could lower property value. Never mind that affordable housing does not statistically lower property value; merely the threat of lowered property value is enough to oppose adequate housing for the disadvantaged members of society.
And of course, it is in a homeowner’s interest to limit new housing construction. Under capitalist logic, more housing supply would decrease housing demand and therefore decrease property values. In other words, the continuing enrichment of homeowners can only occur so long as others are exploited in the capitalist system.
President Trump, as the mouthpiece for the capitalist class, made clear his intentions last month: “I don’t want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people who own their homes. And they can be assured that’s what’s going to happen.” It should be clear, then, that the housing crisis is here to stay so long as capitalism reigns supreme in the U.S., and only the decommodification of housing can guarantee an end to housing discrimination and an end to the housing crisis at large.
As with all news-analysis and op-ed articles published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
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