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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

#31

Post by franciscop »

jrockway wrote: post #16
Victerius wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how laws can prevent discrimination, to be honest. LLs can refuse to rent to anyone for arbitrary reasons without being required to divulge the true reason.

It being illegal means you can drag the landlord to court and ask them to explain their thinking to the court. You can say, look, here's the income and rental histories and credit scores for your tenants in separate apartments, here's documentation saying we are above that, so what's the reason for the rejection. And, lying under oath is its own crime. This is like saying "murder shouldn't be illegal because everyone…

No way, in most countries you also have the right to remain silent, or not say anything that could incriminate yourself, or can be assumed to lie if you are defending yourself. This is not how any of it works, at all.

You cannot force someone to explain things in court like this in any kind of decent way, the laws are there to catch the openly racists IMHO. You probably even need probably cause/crime indication, which "I think, with no proof whatsoever, that he is racist" is not.

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

#33

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ankittyagi wrote: post #23

I faced same problem in Canada. Vietnamese owner refused to rent me a place citing he does not allow Indian tenants because they are smelly.

You have various legal remedies in Canada which do not exist, in practice, in Singapore.

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

#34

Post by lotsofpulp »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #22
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?

It is impossible to charge a fee large enough to recoup costs of certain smells.

Many years ago, when I worked at a hotel catering to long term stays, a portion of the clientele used to be Indian families working for TCS/Infosys/Cognizant/Gentech/etc. Their rooms were automatically put out of order for 2 to 3 weeks after their anticipated departure date, because there was a sufficiently high probability it would need significant time to air out and probably carpet shampooing and other remedies.

At $150+ per night of lost revenue, no one would be willing to pay damages, and smells leave no conclusive evidence that will let you win any damages in court.

Solution was to amortize these costs over all hotel guests, just like any other externalities caused by other hotel guests.

Obviously, if you do not have volume, then you can greatly reduce your expenses by avoiding certain risks, which manifest as deciding not to rent to someone who you think has a high probability of costing you more money to rehabilitate the dwelling for subsequent rentals.

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

#35

Post by sidibe »

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…

Does curry smell even linger? I don't even consider it a bad smell but its not like it's going to permeate the walls like smoking. Funny he was fine with the Chinese in that case, who are more likely to cook chitlins at some point which can smell strong and bad for a week.

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

#36

Post by _fat_santa »

raarts wrote: post #19
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…

Why? Globally speaking, the US is one of the least racist countries.

I think it's hard for even Americans to wrap their heads around how big the country really is, and how diverse it is. While typically less racist, you still get a ton of it in various places, less about the place and more about the individual person.

It's also hard to compare the US to other places. Japan and many other places are very homogenous societies, the US is the polar opposite and wears that with pride. At a high level you can say "Americans aren't racist" and that would mostly be true, but in the details everyone is different.

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

#37

Post by JumpCrisscross »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #34
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It is impossible to charge a fee large enough to recoup costs of certain smells. Many years ago, when I worked at a hotel catering to long term stays, a portion of the clientele used to be Indian families working for TCS/Infosys/Cognizant/Gentech/etc. Their rooms were automatically put out of order for 2 to 3 weeks after their anticipated departure date, because there was a sufficiently high probability it would need…

> impossible to charge a fee large enough to recoup costs of certain smells

Why? Hotels that permit pets frequently have astronomical my-pet-peed fees. The point of the fee is less to be charged and more to signal that someone shouldn’t take the room if that’s a probability.

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

#38

Post by yardie »

timwaagh wrote: post #24

Landlording is something that is likely to make a person more racist. A couple of bad experiences and you start preferring people similar to those that did not give trouble in the past.

Too bad there isn't a service that could look into the historical background of prospective tenants to gain references, criminal, credit, job and salary information. Completely objective and mostly without inherent prejudices.

We may even call it something like "a background check".

Just spitballing ideas!

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

#39

Post by quickthrower2 »

timwaagh wrote: post #24

Landlording is something that is likely to make a person more racist. A couple of bad experiences and you start preferring people similar to those that did not give trouble in the past.

It makes me biasless. The tenant I thought would be awesome in paper really screwed us over. Now I have no idea how to judge a good perspective tenant and it is a crapshoot. It wont be because of race though.

Yes did thorough DD.

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

#40

Post by sn41 »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #5

Sadly common in Singapore. The usual excuse trotted out is that Indian cooking, particularly the use of ghee, leaves a strong smell in the kitchen that requires either extensive renovation to get rid of, or another Indian tenant. Singapore has a significant local Indian minority and many mainland Indian expats, but while public housing is forcibly desegregated with racial quotas, in the private market this means ther…

Since you mention it as an excuse, what do you think the real issue is?
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