If you force people to have someone in their house that they don't want, they are not going to rent their house out. This will lead to less units on the market. Your point about racism is fair, but I don't think the answer is a solution that reduces rentable units on the market.
The one that actually exists? Have you never heard of the HUD fair housing initiatives programs? You hire a white actor and a black actor with the same job, income, credit, etc and if a landlord consistently refuses to rent to the black actors, you sic the DoJ on them for violating the Fair Housing Act
Nope, I hadn't heard of that. Neat. I see two problems though:
1. I can see this being effective against larger landlord that will have many units available every year, ensuring that adequate testing can be performed. But on smaller landlords with only a few units, it seems like it'd be hard to test. (for example, you get rejected from an apartment. The landlord rents it out to someone else. You file a FHIP complaint, but the landlord no longer has any units available so they cannot test.)
2. It seems like this is largely driven by complaints? If I was rejected from an apartment, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to glean whether or not it was based on race.
Re #2: I feel like people of the kinds of races that often get discriminated against have pretty decent radar when it comes to figuring out why they were rejected.
