NGO rejects iBilik’s justification for race preference feature in room rental listings

 Architects of Diversity executive director Jason Wee says excluding someone by race is discrimination, regardless of how it is labelled.

AOD, in its analysis of the 35,367 listings collected over two days from iBilik last month, showed that nearly half of the listings in the Klang Valley suggested that prospective tenants of certain races are not welcome. (Envato Elements pic)

PETALING JAYA:

 NGO Architects of Diversity (AOD) has doubled down on its criticism against iBilik after the room-for-rent listings agency said the race preference feature on its website was introduced to “ease the search process” and ensure compatibility in shared living situations.

AOD’s executive director, Jason Wee, said that excluding someone by race is discrimination, regardless of how it is labelled.

“A landlord who excludes a tenant from consideration based on their race, before even knowing them, is not making an individual assessment of compatibility,” he said in a statement.

The landlord is instead making a blanket judgment based on racial generalisations.

“That is what the word ‘discrimination’ means, and no amount of reframing it as ‘compatibility’ or ‘living requirements’ changes the nature of the act,” he said.

“This is not a story about housemate preferences. It is racial exclusion of a minority group at scale, and the data leaves very little room for an alternative reading.”

Wee said the pattern is clear, with 31.7% out of over 35,000 listings on iBilik explicitly excluding Indian tenants, while only 7.6% exclude Malays and 3.9% exclude Chinese.

Yesterday, iBilik explained that the race preference feature on its website was introduced to “ease the search process” in shared living situations where compatibility between housemates is important.

It denied supporting or promoting racial discrimination in any form and emphasised that living requirements were a necessary consideration, given Malaysia’s multiracial and multicultural makeup.

AOD, in its analysis of 35,367 listings collected over two days from iBilik last month, showed that nearly half of the listings in the Klang Valley suggested that prospective tenants of certain races are not welcome.

It found that 42.8% explicitly exclude at least one racial group, “making discrimination the most common landlord stance on the platform”.

Wee had said that by letting landlords tick a box to exclude an entire race from seeing their listings, iBilik is “actively enabling discrimination at scale”.

Not a natural feature in the rental market

Wee said iBilik’s defence also implied that its race preference function is a “natural feature of the rental market”.

“It is not. Among Malaysia’s major property and rental platforms, including PropertyGuru, iProperty, SpeedHome, and Mudah.my, none offer a built-in function that allows landlords to exclude prospective tenants by race,” he said.

He said that if iBilik is sincere in its claim that it does not support racial discrimination, then it needs to remove the feature immediately.

He also urged the Board of Valuers, Appraisers, Estate Agents and Property Managers (LPEPH) to issue a clear and public stance against registered estate agents and property managers who facilitate racial discrimination in the rental market. - FMT