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• 1 2022-11-22T17:09:28-08:00 Pets, Rentals, & Racial Inequalities 12 The question this page explores is not whether or not housing is discriminatory—it is, in many, many ways—but rather, “How is housing discriminatory—specifically racist and ageist—in previously unacknowledged ways?” plain 2022-12-12T12:16:53-08:00 For anyone with pets, the sentence, “Jessica Evans sold her condo and bought a house for her dog Lucy” probably isn’t a shocking sentiment. In an era where 85% of households consider their dog a family member (and where 76% think the same of their cat), it should come as no surprise that pet owners want their pets to be just as comfortable in their homes as they are. And at the forefront of this movement are millennials, the age demographic born between 1981 and 1996. Millennials comprise 32% of the 90.5 million pet owners in the United States in 2022, the largest percentage by generation.
  
  
  So when CNBC viewers saw Jessica Evans on-camera for the first time, it was probably not surprising that she was a young white woman. In this instance, race is an important demographic factor. While many pet ownership statistics combine all racial demographics together in favor of grouping statistics by information about the pet, for example, there are clear differences in the race and ethnicities of pet owners. The most recent publicly available data from the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) shows that almost 65% of white households and 61% of Latino or Hispanic households own pets compared to only 37% of Black households.
  
  The question this page explores is not whether or not housing is discriminatory—it is, in many, many ways—but rather, “How is housing discriminatory—specifically racist and ageist—in previously unacknowledged ways?”
  
  For Joshunda Sanders, a Black writer and educator, the reason there are fewer Black pet owners, especially Black dog owners, is rooted in history: “We have stereotypes of how pit bulls are. We have stereotypes about how German Shepherds are, and those stereotypes come from police dogs being sicked on us during Civil Rights Era protests.” She goes on to say that Black people are sometimes raised with the “idea that these big dogs are trained to dislike us, trained to attack us instead of being ‘man’s best friend.’”
  
  
  Similarly, other studies have engaged in the perceived connections of pit bulls as the companion of drug dealers and the subsequent stereotype that Black men are more likely to be drug dealers (Bronwen Dickey, 2016), which contributes to the argument that “breed restrictive policies [in rental housing] function to promote racial segregation” (Ann Linder, 2018).
  
  A recent study of 266 properties in Forsyth County, North Carolina (population 379,099 with a 27.5% Black/African American population) found that in neighborhoods with Black residents as the largest racial demographic group, only 48.1% of rental properties allowed dogs and only 46.8% allowed cats compared to predominantly white neighborhoods where dogs were allowed in 76.4% of rental properties and cats were allowed in 72.4% of rental properties.
  
  The study also found that race was the key factor in determining whether or not pets were allowed on rental properties, as opposed to socioeconomic class (which does often intersect with race), noting that lower-income neighborhoods still featured clusters of pet-friendly properties as long as that neighborhood was predominantly white, which the authors propose could be related to gentrification of that area. Admittedly, one’s socioeconomic class does contribute in significant ways to housing, as middle- and upper-class individuals are more likely to own their own homes, which allows a freedom from breed and size restrictions or blanket no-pet policies not afforded to people in lower socioeconomic classes (and particularly people of color).
  
  Another demographic statistic that affects housing potentialities is a tenant’s age. Younger tenants are more likely to be renting and more likely to rent for longer periods (earning the “generation rent” moniker), so issues regarding pets and housing policies are exacerbated for this demographic. A recent study interviewed tenants and prospective tenants ages twenty-one to thirty-one (many of whom fall within the millennial age demographic referenced earlier) about the process, ease, and cost of finding housing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
  
  In addition to feeling that landlords discriminated against younger tenants who owned certain breeds of dogs—particularly large breeds or those breeds deemed “aggressive,” such as pit bulls, Rottweilers, and Dobermans—these tenants also addressed the “substandard quality” of pet-friendly properties compared to all rental properties available, citing potential rentals as often being “run down” or “in horrible shape,”  which is consistent with previous research in this area.
  
  
  
  Contributing to the lower quality of pet-friendly rentals is the location of the neighborhood. Some tenants reported feeling unsafe while walking their dogs in their neighborhood while others were forced to move substantially further away from their workplaces or the city center, requiring them to reschedule their days, sometimes leaving pets at home alone for longer than is healthy. It should be noted that the study did not expound on why some tenants felt unsafe in their given neighborhoods, but it is a fair assumption that this discomfort is, to an extent, because of racial demographics. As discussed above, racial profiles of Black Americans as drug dealers or otherwise violent people effects the degree to which they are discriminated against in the housing market, but these stereotypes also affect how white residents view their Black neighbors.
  
  Many studies have been done that show how housing is discriminatory—against people of color, especially—but an often-under-looked intersection of demographic is how pet ownership affects one’s ability to secure housing, or, in some cases how one’s other demographic factors like race and age affect the ability to keep a pet. The following pages will elaborate on the social and emotional benefits of owning pets and illuminate why the discrimination discussed in this essay are particularly upsetting and actually work to perpetuate existing inequality.