Housing preferences and attitudes of Blacks toward housing discrimination in metropolitan Miami

Significant housing discrimination against Blacks continues to exist in Metropolitan Miami, as it does in most other large United States cities. Blacks in Miami live in neighborhoods that are not nearly as segregated by socioeconomic status as are Hispanic and non-Hispanic White neighborhoods. This study uses data derived from interviews of 432 Black heads of households living in Miami neighborhoods that are at least 50% Black. Although most of the African Americans interviewed said they think their neighborhood is desirable and said they want to live where they do, it is clear that they are not living where they most prefer. They live in predominantly Black neighborhoods because they feel unwelcome in White neighborhoods and they fear housing discrimination in the latter. Among other problems, the continued residential concentration of Blacks in predominantly Black neighborhoods of mixed socioeconomic status in Miami results in a bidding up of the price of housing that is left for the less affluent Blacks.