Accommodating persons with AIDS: Acceptance and rejection in rental situations

Effects of a prospective tenant's reference to AIDS upon obtaining communit y accommodation were examined in a sample of 160 individuals advertising ro oms or flats for rent in two Canadian cities, Windsor and London, Ontario, and in Detroit, Michigan. Telephone calls, for half the sample, made simple inquiries as to room or flat availability; for the other half, similar inq uiries were made by an individual who was ostensibly a hospitalized person with AIDS, soon to require accommodation. In the latter condition, rooms we re significantly more likely to be described as unavailable. Chi-square and odds-ratio calculations showed that in each sample, the probability of rej ection for calls including the AIDS reference was considerably greater than for calls not including it. Comparisons are made to similar previous resea rch and to current perspectives about community reactions to stigmatizing c onditions.