Housing Markets, Discrimination, and Environmental Injustice

update: Housing Markets, Discrimination, and Environmental Injustice with Christopher Timmins has been rescheduled for November 14.

There will be no Weston Roundtable this week, September 26.

media release: Join the Nelson Institute Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment for this week’s Weston Roundtable lecture, Room 1163

Speaker:  Christopher Timmins, professor of real estate and urban land economics, Wisconsin School of Business, UW–Madison 

A long literature in environmental justice has documented the disproportionate exposure of low-income and BIPOC groups to environmental harms, but research continues to explore the mechanisms leading to these disparities. Inequitable siting of pollution sources or enforcement of environmental regulations have been found to be important, but discrimination, information asymmetries and other housing market failures may also play an important role. This talk will present results from recent research on housing discrimination with a focus on how these activities might steer certain groups of housing seekers into unhealthy, low-opportunity neighborhoods.

The Weston Roundtable is made possible by a generous donation from Roy F. Weston, a highly accomplished UW-Madison alumnus. Designed to promote a robust understanding of sustainability science, engineering, and policy, these interactive lectures are co-sponsored by the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE), the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the Office of Sustainability.