There are two million incidents of housing discrimination nationwide each year, estimated George Boyle, managing attorney at the Bloomington office of Prairie Legal Services.

Henderson said housing discrimination is not a big problem in DeKalb, and cases are infrequent.

Housing discrimination is unequal treatment by a landlord against a potential tenant for racial, gender, ethnic, religious or sexual preference reasons, said Don Henderson, director of Students’ Legal Assistance.

In addition to denying a person housing or lying about availability, steering people to a specific building to isolate their minority status is also illegal, Henderson said.

Jim Mason, owner of Mason Properties, said he has been in the renting business for a long time and hasn’t seen any real discrimination in DeKalb in more than 20 years.

“It would be pointless and hazardous to discriminate,” Mason said. “It would cut out 35 percent of your profit. You’d go bankrupt.”

Margery Turner, director of the Metro Center at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., studies housing discrimination and directed a 2000 study conducted by the institute.

“In pair testing, two people (one white, one minority) visit the same rental offices to inquire about homes or apartments,” Turner said. “They have identical income, assets and need for housing. Analysts then compare how they were treated.”

The study suggested minorities face significant subtle discrimination, as they received less assistance than their white counterparts 20 to 25 percent of the time, Turner said.

But the study also suggests blacks and Hispanics have experienced significantly less discrimination in the last decade, Turner said.

Many people do not know their rights and the remedies available to them, Boyle said.

There are several remedies for housing discrimination. Housing and Urban Development enforces all fair housing laws, and a complaint can be filed through them or the Illinois Department of Human Rights within two years of the occurrence, Boyle said.

The maximum penalties for such litigation are $10,000 for a first violation and $50,000 for a third violation within seven years.