Indians most affected by rental bias: Pure prejudice, stereotype or strategic commercial decision?

 

NOBODY knows for sure if the on-going spate of illegal temple dispute polemic has somehow influenced the sentiment of Malay commenters whom in the past would have stoutly stood up for Indian tenants whenever the subject of discriminatory home/room rental practice was brought up.

What is certain, however, is that a report by Architects of Diversity (AOD) has found that room rentals in the Klang Valley that accept Indian tenants cost on average 11.2% more (about RM74 extra) compared to those that exclude the community, effectively imposing a “discrimination premium”.

The report by the non-profit AOD entitled Room Rental Discrimination. Volume 1: The Klang Valley Report went on to reveal that the cheapest rooms are also the most explicitly discriminatory against Indians as 43.7% of listings below RM400 deliberately exclude them.

This was similar for Chinese renters who were excluded from 26.6% of listings in the same category while Malay renters experienced a different pattern of discrimination as they were consistently excluded from listings across different room prices at the rates of 5.5% to 8.5%.

Deemed to be the first systematic quantitative analysis of explicit racial discrimination in Malaysia’s rental sector, the report relied on the iBilik room rental platform to analyse 35,367 listings to assess the extent of racial filtering by landlords and agents.

More broadly, the study highlighted that Indian renters face by far the highest level of exclusion with 31.7% of all listings in the Klang Valley explicitly exclude Indian renters compared to 7.6% for Malay renters and 3.9% for Chinese renters.

While 96.1% of listings accept Chinese renters and 92.4% accept Malay renters, only 68.3% of listings are open to Indian renters or roughly one in three listings is inaccessible to the ethnic group at the outset.

Let market forces decide

The AOD findings triggered – thankfully – a civilised debate on X as per a Malaysiakini report on the matter considering that Malaysians might not be ready for such ’explosice’ conversation.

While the PSM Gombak branch opposed discriminatory renting practice “just because of one’s skin colour”, one self-proclaimed “professional provocateur” stressed the need “to put yourself in the homeowners’ shoes”.

“Would you take the risk of renting to people with higher likelihood of destroying your property, not paying rent and refusing to move out?” he justified. “There’s obviously a premium if someone is willing to take the risk.”

One landlord claimed that he “only rent to Japs & Koreans” and never to others as “(1) Chinese cooking (is) too heavy, mess up the kitchen; (2) Mat Sallehs complain too much, they think this is first world; and (3) Indians have bad record in payments”.

“So is that discrimination or just strategic commercial considerations?” hr asked.

Inevitably, provocative sentiment sparked by rightists arising from the anti-kuil haram controversy has reared its ugly head as evident from the feedback one commenter received after she remarked that “Indians are aware and constantly have to navigate that discrimination at every level of life’s journey”.

“Just try and imagine walking in our shoes,” she lamented but only for detractors to hurl abuses at her.

Back to serious business, it was a tad shocking when one commenter revealed that even “Indian landlords” are biased themselves.

“Don’t believe me? Just scroll through FB (Facebook) groups and Mudah (Malaysia’s largest horizontal online marketplace) ,” he shared.

This was backed up by another commenter who presumably spoke from experience for having deduced that “people (who) talked about ‘discriminating Indians’ obviously have not rented to Indians before”.

“They damage your house furniture, make a huge mess to your kitchen from all the smelly curries. Got kids? They draw on the walls! Now, are they going to compensate the landlords? NO! ,” he fumed.

Well, this could be triggered by one or more bad experiences with bad apples having come from all races but sadly more prevalent among tenants of Indian origin.

Alas, the landlord has the last say with regard to wanting to bear with the risk or otherwise or simply leave it to market forces to decide.

For those who believe that there is always a silver lining to every misery, one Malaysiakini subscriber suggested turning the discriminatory challenge into an aspiration.

“Every Indian should strive to buy their own house instead of begging for rental homes from other races who feel too superior,” he quipped. 

- focus malaysia