Study Finds High Rates of Housing Bias : Discrimination: Blacks, Latinos, whites posed as potential buyers or renters in nationwide tests. Minorities were turned away at much higher rate.

Blacks and Latinos encounter some form of discrimination at least half the time when they try to rent or purchase homes in major urban areas, according to a new government study to be released today.

The $2-million audit of real estate practices during the spring and summer of 1989 sent 3,800 black, white and Latino couples in search of homes in 25 metropolitan areas, including Los Angeles and San Diego. In each instance, a white couple and either a black or Latino couple attempted to buy or rent the same housing.

According to the 41-page study’s definition, discrimination occurs “when rental or sales agents systematically treat minorities unfavorably, such as withholding information from blacks about listed homes while revealing information to whites or telling Latinos that a requested apartment was rented and later showing it to a white couple.

In findings that Raymond J. Struyk of the Urban Institute in Washington, one of the report’s authors, labeled “shocking,” the study found that 59% of the time when blacks tried to purchase a home they were discriminated against; Latinos were discriminated against in 56% of their attempts.

Blacks and Latinos attempting to rent fared about as poorly, encountering discrimination in 56% and 50% of their respective searches.

“I find this stuff shocking,” Struyk said. “Opinion polls seem to suggest that white Americans are more tolerant when it comes to allowing blacks to live in their neighborhoods or next door to them. Yet the behavior of real estate and rental agents seems not to have changed.”

Officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, who will make the study public today, could not be reached for comment Thursday night. A draft copy of the report was obtained by The Times.

In a similar study in 1977, HUD researchers found that specific instances of discrimination against minorities occurred. But researchers in the earlier study found that a black couple were twice as likely to be told that an apartment was not available as in the 1989 study. On the other hand, blacks were twice as likely to receive discriminatory rental terms or contracts in 1989 than they were in 1977.

Researchers said they have concluded that the recent report provides “no convincing evidence that the incidence of discrimination has changed since the late 1970s.”

Researchers sent pairs of auditors posing as married couples to find homes listed in newspaper ads in both the 1977 and 1989 studies. Couples in 1977 chose their homes from a random sample of advertised homes, while the 1989 couples were given Sunday newspaper advertisements and told to ask real estate agents for specifically listed apartments or houses.

The latter process, called “anchoring,” ensured that the auditors asked for exactly the same property and minimized possible confusion in the reporting of the discrimination encountered.

“The 1977 study was more general,” Struyk said. “By anchoring each audit we would expect to reduce the extent of discrimination in the 1989 study.”

Realtors who discriminated in the study are not likely to be prosecuted, according to the report. The audits “were not designed to assemble complete evidence of discrimination in individual cases,” it said. Instead, the researchers were seeking to measure “the extent to which blacks and Hispanics experience discrimination.”

Criminal prosecutions based on the report’s findings “are entirely outside the scope of the . . . analysis and reports,” the study said.

Other findings:

--Blacks were denied all information about rental units 6% of the time and Latinos were denied information 8% of the time.

--Blacks were not given sales information in 5% of the audits and Latinos were not given sales data in 4%.

--Instances of discrimination against whites were “substantially low” enough that HUD officials did not require them to be included in the official report, Struyk said.

--Factors such as income, class or education were factored into the audits and had no effect on the outcomes.

--There was no substantial difference in incidents of discrimination between suburban and inner-city communities.