141–150 of 150 posts
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As somebody unfamiliar with London but considering moving there, it would be great if instead of specifying a geographical radius for the search I could specify a commuting time radius with respect to the City. This would probably be useful even to natives, as I'm sure there are probably many areas where people overestimate commuting times and consequently avoid an area that otherwise should see greater housing deman…
www.findproperly.co.uk
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Wrong. Your obligations and duties start the second you make an offer. You may not have obligations to a tenant that doesn't exist, but that doesn't mean you don't have to comply with the applicable laws. Based off of your opinions in this thread, I highly suggest that you never rent out your property. Your opinions on what the law says will likely end up with you in jail.
So please enlighten me what are the applicable laws and how they can put me in jail for cancelling an offer or choosing one candidate and not the other.
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There's certainly a good amount of racism in Munich (it's really best for a lot of people that you can't understand most drunks around here), and realtors generally aren't the creme of the crop of basic goodness anyway. But I think a part of it comes down to a higher chance of young people with Arab names either being students (short-term, prone to be loud and messy no matter where they're from) or more likely to bri…
Well I'm sure that age has something to do with it, but a 1% response rate is so ridiculously low that you can't just explain that away with age. I'm sure that under 25 german males are not getting responses 1% of the time.
Of which there is a lot, too, of course. This is Munich, which has a much sadder 9th of November than Berlin.
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The same way they prove any other type of crime. Sometimes people are blatant (e.g. the english hoteliers who refused to rent a room to a same sex couple), or when you put other facts together it becomes obvious (e.g. at 1:00pm the landlord tells someone with a foreign accent that it's unavailable, but at 3:00pm they tell someone with a different accent that it's available), or sometimes an offer is withdrawn when a…
That's why you have to be picky and careful when you decide to rent to someone you don't know. You don't want to be accused of something that's 'obvious' to someone, but is not necessarily the truth. So you naturally prefer people you know and can understand and rule out potential troublemakers early - sorry... And if you have 30 candidates to choose from, well, you know the answer - everyone has some preferences and…
You're quite free to believe it's not racist, and that the sky is purple, but the law has different ideas and will act accordingly.
The conclusion from this little study, is that a girl with an italian name, gets an 90% answer rate, a guy with an arab name and is younger than 25 gets, 1% answer rate. The master of all, is the young munich guy who is around 25 Sadly, this doesn't surprise me. Across Europe, numerous anti-discrimination laws have been (rightfully) enacted, but it just pushes any inclination to discriminate that might exist into pri…
Anti-discrimination laws do not solve any problems, they make them worse. If someone is not willing to hire a person because of their ethnicity/color/sex/age/whatever, a law will not make him do it. Finding an excuse is too easy and it is basically impossible to prove such things in court. I recommend watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzXXvUjg8Fo
Laws against (say) homosexual sex, or norms/laws/rules mentioning homosexuality in schools/TV kept many homosexuals in the closet, hidden and powerless. I hope we can do the same for racism.
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I really dislike this mentality. I think it's counterproductive, and I hope you change your mind. Laws play their role. Sometimes they walk fine lines between usefulness, uselessness and harmfulness, but they are not unequivocally useless in all such cases. Consider the gay awakening. When I was in high school the world was a qualitatively different place for homosexuals. A worse place. The axis around which culture…
This feels like pie-in-the-sky sort of thinking. Sure, you can make certain kinds of decision making processes illegal, but it doesn't change the hearts and minds of the people making those decisions. As has been said here already, this only pushes those processes out of the public eye and into the private space. Those who would discriminate on illegal grounds will always be able to manufacture plausible deniability,…
Many people are routinely convicted/fined/sued for anti-discrimination laws. So clearly they won't "always be able to manufactor plausible deniability".
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I agree with a lot of what you say, but in reality you actually can legislate morality and change hearts and minds. It doesn't happen as fast as creating the legislation, but over time, hearing a message over and over, it becomes embedded and believed. So while you may not change a particular person's mind, you stand a chance of changing their kid's mind. There was a time, not that long ago, in America where if you w…
Don't you think the act of creating the legislation is itself part of the peoples' changing hearts and minds? To me it seems like you have the cause and effect reversed.
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That's why you have to be picky and careful when you decide to rent to someone you don't know. You don't want to be accused of something that's 'obvious' to someone, but is not necessarily the truth. So you naturally prefer people you know and can understand and rule out potential troublemakers early - sorry... And if you have 30 candidates to choose from, well, you know the answer - everyone has some preferences and…
Just because you'd prefer to rent to people of the same nationality, doesn't mean it's legal. (likewise for age/sex). In your opinon that's not racist. In the law's opinion that is racist, and you can be convicted/fined for it. You're quite free to believe it's not racist, and that the sky is purple, but the law has different ideas and will act accordingly.
PS a little thought experiment: you're renting an appartment and two people show up - one white and one black, with similar income, jobs and credit history. You have to pick one, so how can you prove your decision was not racist?
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Just because you'd prefer to rent to people of the same nationality, doesn't mean it's legal. (likewise for age/sex). In your opinon that's not racist. In the law's opinion that is racist, and you can be convicted/fined for it. You're quite free to believe it's not racist, and that the sky is purple, but the law has different ideas and will act accordingly.
Law doesn't have an opinion. People have opinions. And you have an opinion that I'm a racist. You can have any opinion, but to 'act accordingly' you'd have to prove your claims - and you don't have anything actionable but your own speculations. You don't even know if its true or not, but you're already making accusations. BTW I can't really imagine how I could be convicted for thoughts or beliefs - only actions are p…
Numerous laws will look at an action and your thoughts to decide what crime you were convicted of (e.g. murder vs manslaughter, theft, intent to commit $CRIME, etc.)
You have to pick one, so how can you prove your decision was not racist?
Cripes, simple examples like that aren't what anti-racism laws are for. It's when 10 black people turn up and the landlord tells them the apartment is gone, but it isn't.
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Can you use the law to punish someone for not responding to an email from 21 year old Mohammed asking if he can rent your apartment? Yes. If you will not rent out your apartment to someone based on their ethnicity/race, that's illegal. If you don't like it, get out of the apartment rental business. It's just so hard to prosecute people for it.
Realistically nobody would know if you're using ethnicity as the basis of your decision right?