In a recent article that went viral on social media, a couple who faced trouble renting a home concluded that it was due to racism. But that’s not necessarily the case, argues our property columnist and experienced landlord, Stella Thng.
In a recent article that went viral on social media, a couple who faced trouble renting a home concluded that it was due to racism. But that’s not necessarily the case, argues our property columnist and experienced landlord, Stella Thng.
My husband and I have been landlords for 16 years. We have always rented out individual bedrooms or the entire unit (after we met our minimum occupation period of five years and applied to the HDB for permission).
So, I read with interest a story in the news about a couple facing difficulty renting a place, and declaring it was because of landlords’ discrimination against a particular race.
Over the years, I have opened my home to tenants from Malaysia, Myanmar, India, the Philippines, and China. They range from professionals on employment passes, students, nurses and blue-collar workers on work permits, to families and groups of friends.
There was even a case of over 20 complete strangers squeezing into my 1,200sqf apartment! We found this out the hard way when we received a call from my HDB officer informing us that our tenants had illegally sublet our HDB flat. My flat had been secretly converted into a dormitory, and was way over the HDB’s limit of nine occupants.
We had signed our lease contract with just seven tenants. Thankfully, I’d done everything by the book – I had submitted the tenants’ details on the HDB’s website (and updated them whenever there was a change in tenants), and paid our income tax on the rental earned.
To our relief, our HDB officer was reassuring and helpful, walking us through what to do next. He had seen many such cases of clueless landlords like us, who were duped by their tenants.
Thanks to our fastidious recordkeeping and swift action, we kicked the tenants out within the week, and were let off after a detailed interview process and being issued an official warning letter.
Still, we did not discriminate against such tenants. The next group seemed like a nice, friendly bunch — three women, including a nurse who spoke good English, and four men who were colleagues. We added a warning in the lease contract in bold font, and met and warned every tenant that they must not practise illegal subletting, or risk facing the consequences.
We made sure to cover all the bases and heeded my HDB officer’s tip to make regular checks. But our tenants kept making excuses. They changed our door lock; nobody was ever free or at home to open the door for us, even though we tried to make appointments early.
They even offered to deliver our letters to us, so that we wouldn’t need to stop by! We smelled a rat, and turned up unannounced one day to discover that 17, not seven, people were living there. We kicked everyone out again.
Twice bitten, thrice shy – we decided to implement a stricter screening process. After all, the rogue tenants often blatantly ignore rules. “Everybody is doing it,” my tenant blithely said without a trace of remorse. “How else can we make money to cover the rent?” He conveniently glossed over the fact that he was making at least $1,500 in profit every month after deducting our rent.
So, what has my unfortunate tale got to do with the recent case of the couple who cried “racism!”?
My point is this: Landlords have their reasons for rejecting tenants. We don’t say no to perfectly good money just for the sake of it. For example, some landlords prefer families over single guys, whom they may stereotype as messy.
However, we happily rented out our flat to three men for two years, and they handed it over spick and span. A group of six men also maintained our place really well, complete with a duty roster to divide the chores. In comparison, a family (among them were four women) left our kitchen in an awful, greasy state and our toilet door hanging off the hinge.
I know of a landlord who stopped renting to people whose cooking habits left a stubborn smell in the house, which he had to repaint. His decision was due to his wish to avoid unnecessary expenditure in the future.
A preference to avoid a certain group of people is really just that — a preference. Often, it is a decision made after learning from past experience.
So, while I sympathise with the couple whose house-hunting experience left a bitter aftertaste, I also urge them to keep an open mind. Correlation does not necessarily mean causation, and to say it is definitely due to racism is, at best, an assumption and generalisation; at worst, a dangerous claim. In these tumultuous times, let’s not create another reason to incite ill feelings in our multiracial society.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Home & Decor, or SPH Magazines.
