A podcast host shares a personal anecdote about his Chinese friend who was repeatedly denied rental properties because her boyfriend is Indian. He describes an experiment where she changed her profile picture to just herself and immediately received three offers, illustrating racial bias. He then asks his guest, an expert on the topic, to comment, who validates the story with another example of a man from Sabah facing similar discrimination due to ignorance, leading to a broader discussion on the responsibilities of property agents.
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📍🟡 "There was an Indian lady who applied to 300 property listings and was denied from every single one."
Jason Wee, co-founder of Architects of Diversity, shares:
• "No Indians" and "Chinese-only" property listings in different areas
• Besides Indians, Malay renters also face discrimination
• The problem with iBilik's race selection feature
• Landlords' limited recourse when renters don't pay on time or trash their house
• The need for the Residential Tenancy Act, which has faced delays since 2019
Watch the full podcast on BFM’s YouTube channel or via the link in our bio.
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Transcript
I have a friend. She's a Chinese woman. Her boyfriend is an Indian guy. Her profile picture on WhatsApp was of both of them together. Tier were trying to rent a place and for weeks and weeks and weeks, they would try. The agents would reject them with with some vague kind of answers. Some would be perhaps a little bit more direct and blunt about it and then the guy said, let's try this experiment. So he told her, you just change our profile, put your profile picture from the both of us to just you. And she did no, she changed her profile picture and within a day, three people offered her room to best, right, just because she removed the Indian guy from her profile picture. How does that tally with what you guys have done in terms of studies, in terms of, you know, the kind of ways people have to maneuver to be able to rent a room? I mean exactly what you just described. I mean I just want to bring out two to three other stories. The first is also this very viral story that happened a few years ago of a Karazan man from Sabah moving to KL for his job and trying to find a room, to the ignorance of many property agents, right? When they listed out his rank in the exact WhatsApp form that, you know, property agents send, the property agent said to him, Oh, sorry. We only rent out to Malaysians. And this yeah. I mean That already speaks to the Peninsula ignorance, Jason. Like, what what are we talking about here? And the fact that the agent was, I guess, so comfortable with with saying that as well, I think speaks volumes to the responsibility of property agents in this field. So also a call out, I think, to the board of valuers, property agents, that they need to also set a standard of profession, when it comes to non discrimination for their agents. And you can imagine people listening to this conversation especially if you're landlords, they might say, hey, so you're saying that you don't care about landlords, you're saying that we should rent out to anyone even if they're gonna come and trash our house completely, you're saying that we do not deserve any kind of justice if people don't pay their rent on time. How would you respond to these kinds of grievances? We need the Residential Tenancy Act. I think it is so so so clear that this is a problem of the rental marketplace as a whole. Yes, racial discrimination is incredibly important, but it's also in my opinion a symptom and a source of something larger, which is a unregulated, bad governed marketplace.
