Realizing Racial and Ethnic Neighborhood Preferences? Exploring the Mismatches Between What People Want, Where They Search, and Where They Live.

The housing search process is an overlooked mechanism in the scholarly research that seeks to understand the causes of persistent racial residential segregation in the United States. Past research has explored in detail the preferences people hold in terms of the racial and ethnic composition of their neighborhoods, and more recently some have also examined the correspondence between racial and ethnic neighborhood preferences and current neighborhood racial/ethnic composition. But an intermediate stage-the racial/ethnic composition of where people search-has not been investigated.

The determinants of neighborhood satisfaction: racial proxy revisited.

Understanding the factors that drive individuals' residential preferences is a critical issue in the study of racial segregation. An important debate within this field is whether individuals-especially whites-prefer to live in predominantly white neighborhoods because they wish to avoid the social problems that may be more likely to occur in predominantly black neighborhoods (i.e.

Does race matter in neighborhood preferences? Results from a video experiment.

Persistent racial residential segregation is often seen as the result of preferences: whites prefer to live with whites while blacks wish to live near many other blacks. Are these neighborhood preferences color-blind or race conscious? Does neighborhood racial composition have a net influence upon preferences, or is race a proxy for social class? This article tests the racial proxy hypothesis using an innovative experiment that isolates the net effects of race and social class, followed by an analysis of the social psychological factors associated with residential preferences. The authors find that net of social class, the race of a neighborhood's residents significantly influenced how it was rated.

Does race matter in the search for housing? An exploratory study of search strategies, experiences, and locations.

In a departure from most studies of the causes of racial residential segregation that focus on the three main factors of economics, preferences, and discrimination, this paper examines one of the mechanisms through which segregation may be perpetuated: the housing search process itself. Data come from a 2004 face-to-face survey of an area probability sample of African American and white householders living in the three counties of the Detroit metropolitan area (n = 734). These data are used to address three research questions: (1) What are the strategies people use to find housing, and are there racial differences in those strategies? (2) Do whites and African Americans report similar or different experiences in the search for housing? (3) Do the locations in which people search for housing vary by race? Results show that once controlling for the type of search and background characteristics, the search strategies are generally similar for whites and blacks, though more so for buyers than renters: for example, black renters use more informal strategies and networks than do white renters.

Whites who say they'd flee: who are they, and why would they leave?

Questions have been raised about whether white flight--one factor contributing to U.S. residential segregation--is driven by racial, race-associated, or neutral ethnocentric concerns.