Officials at Newton City Hall are concerned over the results of a new report that show discrimination could be preventing families and people of color from buying homes in the city.

Soaring housing costs may be keeping many people from moving to Newton, but a report to be released today shows that discrimination by local real estate companies could also be shutting out families and people of color.

Conducted by the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston, the report examined practices in both the rental and sales market. The report showed that some real estate agents and management companies provided false information about the availability of apartments in Newton or provided different terms to renters who are black, Latino or of Caribbean descent, as well as renters who have children or hold rental assistance housing vouchers. The testing found evidence of discrimination in nearly half of 24 tests that were done.

The audit also found that blacks and Latinos seeking to purchase a single-family home in Newton were denied or given limited access and information about homes in at least three out of a total of 10 tests that were done.

The audit was initiated by the city of Newton and the city’s Fair Housing Task Force.

High housing costs have frequently been identified as one of the major barriers to housing in Newton, but the task force wanted to “look a little deeper” into why the city was not attracting a more diverse population, explained Henry Korman, a Newton resident who serves as chairman of the task force.

In an interview last week, Korman said task force members have shared stories and anecdotes about housing discrimination in Newton but there were no sound data or information about its occurrence. The report, which will be released tonight at a Fair Housing Month celebration at the city library, does not identify which real estate companies were tested.

“We were very clear that what we were doing was not an enforcement audit,” said Korman. “We really wanted to understand better what we had been hearing about Â… We didn’t want to know who the real estate companies were that were being tested.”

The audit results were not a surprise to Korman, an attorney who specializes in housing.

“What we saw [in this audit] is very similar to what we see in the region,” he said.

‘As Inclusive as Possible’
The rental audit, conducted last September and October, involved 24 paired tests of 18 real estate agencies and management companies serving Newton. Blacks, Latinos and Caribbean Americans posing as renters were paired with whites, while individuals with children were paired with childless renters, and Section 8 housing voucher holders teamed up with individuals who didn’t have vouchers.

The tests involving renters with children and Section 8 vouchers were conducted via telephone, while the tests for race or national origin were conducted by testers who met with agents. Of the 24 tests, 11 revealed evidence of discrimination, according to the audit.

Three out of six real estate agencies tested showed discrimination based on race, while four out of six tests demonstrated evidence of discrimination based on national origin, according to the study. In addition, two out of six agencies displayed evidence of discrimination based on familial status, while two out of six discriminated based on the Section 8 housing voucher.

The most common form of discrimination, the rental audit revealed, involved agents providing false information about the availability of apartments. That happened in six out of 24 paired tests.

In one case, a Latino renter and white tester e-mailed an agent and left voice-mail messages seeking information about an apartment. The white tester received an e-mail from the agent that included photos of an apartment and was able to make an appointment to see the apartment. The Latino tester never received any type of response from the agent.

In two other instances, real estate agents provided different terms and conditions to the black and Latino renters. A real estate agent quoted a monthly rent to a Latino tester that was $75 higher than the rent offered to the white tester. In the same test, the agent mentioned a special offer of half a month rent-free to the white tester only, and said a security deposit was not required. The Latino renter was told that security deposit was required. According to the study, the Latino tenant would have paid $2,850 more than the white renter for the first year to rent the same apartment.

The sales audit, conducted in January and February and involving eight real estate offices, revealed that in three out of 10 tests a person of color was discriminated against. In one test, a black buyer waited at a home for an hour after making an appointment with an agent. The tester called the agent three times, but the agent never arrived.

The agent returned her messages three days later, and when the tester asked to reschedule to see the house during the week, the agent refused to show the house on the weekday and proposed an appointment on a Saturday.

When the white tester called the same agent approximately half an hour later, she was able to make an appointment for the next day – which was a weekday. The white tester was able to see the home and the Realtor called the black tester shortly after to cancel the Saturday appointment, saying she had a buyer who was willing to make an offer.

After receiving preliminary results of the audit, the Newton Fair Housing Task Force met with a group of about 25 local Realtors from large and smaller real estate offices to discuss the report and talk about outreach and training efforts to prevent discrimination.

Ed Lyon, an agent with Preservation Properties in Newton who was present at the meeting, said that Realtors didn’t see the specific results of the study but were told that there was evidence of discrimination.

“I think that Newton and the brokers in Newton are trying to be as proactive as possible in identifying discrimination and nipping it in the bud,” said Lyon. “Most of the Realtors in Newton live in Newton and want to make it as inclusive as possible.”

Lyon added that local real estate brokers want to help the city with a public awareness campaign to draw attention to the issue.

Community leaders hope that the audit will serve as a “springboard” for an action plan to combat discrimination. Part of the action plan includes an update and expansion of an existing zoning ordinance that would expressly ban discriminatory housing practices in the city. The changes would give the city’s Human Rights Commission more power to investigate and handle housing discrimination complaints, and would provide more of a “clear-cut” system for dealing and processing such complaints, explained Korman.

The city also plans to do more outreach and educate the public about their housing rights. Korman said he anticipates there will be an “uptick” in housing-related complaints because of the public outreach.

This is the first city-initiated and city-funded fair housing audit in the Greater Boston area, said David J. Harris, executive director of the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston.

Harris praised Newton officials for being proactive in their efforts to address fair housing issues and said the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston, which covers 147 communities in the Boston region, has been working for the past five years to identify communities with which it can work.

“Newton is the only one to step up to the plate,” said Harris.

While housing affordability is often cited as a reason why some Bay State communities are segregated, Harris said recent research by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University and the Fair Housing Center have shown that discriminatory practices in the real estate and mortgage industries are partly to blame.

Studies have illustrated that minorities are concentrated in only a few Bay State communities and are underrepresented in other towns based on the homes they can afford.

Part of the problem is that people of color don’t feel comfortable moving into certain communities, Harris said.

“Newton is making itself known as a place that’s determined to make itself a comfortable place for people of color to move into,” Harris said.

The audit results are consistent with what the Fair Housing Center has found in testing that it has conducted in other Greater Boston communities. But unlike the Newton testing, the other reports showed cases of agents steering minorities into certain neighborhoods.

Newton Mayor David B. Cohen made the testing known to the public at a press conference at City Hall last Monday. “I have often said that the measure of the character of our community is not whether bad things happen here, but rather, the measure of our community is how we respond to them,” Cohen said in a prepared statement. “It is only until we are aware that there may be a problem that we can address it, and that’s how we’ve approached the voluntary audit.”

The Newton audit follows a report that the Fair Housing Center released in October in which 36 white testers were paired with blacks and Latinos who posed as first-time homebuyers and visited franchise offices or affiliates of large real estate firms in 14 Greater Boston communities. The report revealed that real estate agents often provided more assistance and information to the white homebuyers, showed them more homes and told them about more for-sale properties. Agents in the study also were more likely to ask blacks and Latinos for mortgage pre-approvals and inquire about their income, employment and current housing.