Journalists of the publication analyzed 32 thousand advertisements for renting housing in the CIAN database in order to identify proposals with a xenophobic context. The sample included those cities of Russia that have metro stations: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Samara, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Yekaterinburg. Incorrect variants were searched automatically using keywords - mentions of "Slavs", Russians, residents of the Russian Federation of different regions, and other nationalities.
It turned out that in Moscow, 14 percent of advertisements for renting apartments contain evidence of ethnic discrimination. In St. Petersburg the figure is 3.6 percent, in other large cities in the aggregate about five percent.
“The cost of the available options for“ non-Slavs ”is higher than for those who are fortunate enough to meet the requirements of landlords in terms of appearance and nationality,” the study authors state. "And the federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of nationality does not work in practice, since there are no real judicial precedents."
Journalists also noticed that the apartment owners have vague ideas about the "Slavs". Sometimes we mean all citizens of the central part of Russia, as well as Belarusians and Ukrainians. Sometimes the latter are discriminated against because of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but mostly the owners oppose tenants from Central Asia and the Caucasus. The ideal tenant, according to Russian landlords, is a Slavic couple, without children or animals, with an official job and no bad habits.
In July, the most unpopular categories of tenants were named. The top includes tenants with pets, visitors from the southern republics of the former USSR and from remote regions of Russia, families with children, people of creative professions and representatives of sexual minorities.