Austrian housing market faces racist discrimination: Study

By Timo Kirez

GENEVA (AA) - The Austrian housing market suffers from racist discrimination especially for people with Muslim backgrounds, a study commissioned by the Ombud for Equal Treatment (GAW) shows.

In early 2023, 157 advertisements in the major Austrian cities of Graz, Vienna, Innsbruck and Linz were responded to by two fake profiles, public broadcaster ORF reported citing the study.

The first profile "Muhammad Asif" received an appointment in only 50% of the cases.

The second profile with the fictitious name "Michael Gruber", who always called after "Asif", always received an appointment.

"People who are discriminated against outside the workplace because of their ethnicity report this to us most often in connection with the search for an apartment," Sandra Konstatzky, the study's director, told ORF.

"Because individual cases are often difficult to prove, we wanted to use this study to show how often discrimination occurs in the housing market," she added.

Test caller "Asif" was told in 18% of his calls that the apartment was already taken. In 4% of his calls, he was told that no appointments were currently available.

According to Konstatzky the landlords use false pretexts in the rejections, since the native-sounding applicant "Gruber" received a promise even two hours later in some cases for the same apartments.

But also, if not directly one canceled, it was clearly more difficult for "Asif" to find an apartment, said Konstatzky.

Thus in 34% of the cases, in which not directly a date came off, further documents were requested by "Asif." In 25% cases additionally a written application was asked for.

The applicant "Gruber", on the other hand, received an appointment for a visit directly in all calls.​​​​​​​