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Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

techinasia.com

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Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#21

Post by jmknoll »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #4

This is among the strangest advertisements I've read. "Are you strongly against discrimination? Then rent from us!"

It's a really weak article in general. 500 words about a single anecdote with no supporting data or much useful context at all, but which manages to name drop two companies and their founders (one of which is presumably the sponsor of the article), along with some new features that they're working on.

I have no doubt that racism like this is a significant problem in Singapore, but this kind of product-placement content doesn't do any justice to the issue.

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#22

Post by JumpCrisscross »

TomVDB wrote: post #10

Was surprised to see “Singapore”, expected “Bay Area.” When I left my last rental after buying a house, my elderly white landlord asked me to help him put the property on Craigslist. When I did so and mentioned the Cupertino school district, he asked me to remove that part because “it would attract too many Indian families with kids” to avoid the curry smell. He had no issue with other Asian ethnicities, the previous…

Is it legal to mandate, as a landlord, not cooking with curry? Or requiring a cleaning surcharge if one does so without e.g. properly ventilating, washing one’s hands and using odor absorbers?

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#25

Post by totetsu »

cafxx wrote: post #3

Yup, common occurrence also here in Tokyo. If you are not Japanese you can expect quite a few rejections, as well as having to pay extra "guarantor" fees, and in general higher than average rent. And, mind you, I'm probably among the lucky ones... if you're from other Asian countries you can probably expect even worse.

Yes, I was told a few time unashamedly that they didn't have the owners permission to rent to foreigners, and a few more times that they were hoping a 'family' would move in. In the end I wasn't even interested in renting from an owner that thought I was one of the good foreigners, but I relented when I found a place I liked.

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#26

Post by yardie »

It's so strange to see how racism and discrimination is carried out in other countries. Even more so when that country is a highly developed like Singapore. Being from the US where housing is highly protected, due mostly to decades of racial discrimination, I'm just thinking "holy shit they'd be eaten alive with the lawsuits coming their way for so blatantly putting it out there."

Also,

> 99.co is now tackling this by introducing an “all-races-welcome” indicator on its website. What this means is that agents and landlords can positively indicate that their properties can be rented by anyone regardless of ethnicity.

Kind of sad they would even need to do this. Maybe William Gibsons Wired article about 90s Singapore was exactly right.

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#28

Post by LightG »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #4

This is among the strangest advertisements I've read. "Are you strongly against discrimination? Then rent from us!"

Why?

Not knowing anything about any of this except I know the type of discrimination happens.

If a company is aware and possibly works against it happening, why wouldn't I say to myself, "You know what? These guys aren't @sssholes, let me go ahead and search their listings".

Re: Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

#30

Post by lettergram »

Every time I hear “America is racist” I remind people the world is far more racist - see story above. This is common practice everywhere. Europe, Asia, etc. they discriminate for different reasons and in different ways, but they all do it and it’s almost always overt.

That’s the culture in the region, imo it’s not “wrong”. People self-select and who am I to discriminate against their culture? They do it for their reasons.

I personally find it reprehensible, but that’s my cultural values. I’m proud of where I’m from (US), where we have spent generations working to mitigate any form of discrimination based on race, gender or creed. It’s not perfect, but we strive in the right direction.

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