Anti-discrimination group Architects of Diversity (AOD) has hit back at popular online rental platform iBilik after the latter defended its practice of allowing landlords and agents to tag racial preferences when listing properties for rent.
In a statement yesterday, iBilik said the feature was introduced with the aim of streamlining the search process for users.
It also said this is especially in shared living situations where compatibility between housemates can be an important factor.
"As Malaysia is a multiracial and multicultural country, we respect all aspects of living requirements. Hence, these features are designed to help users narrow down listings and find suitable living arrangements more efficiently.
"iBilik does not support or promote racial discrimination in any form as this is not in line with our platform standards and we take such matters cautiously and seriously.
"Our aim has always been to make the accommodation matching and admission process simpler and more transparent so tenants and property owners can find the right match.
"iBilik, as a Malaysian brand, remains committed to improving our platform and supporting a fair and responsible rental marketplace for everyone," it added.
On March 12, Malaysiakini published a report by AOD showing that room rentals in the Klang Valley accepting Indian tenants cost on average 11.2 percent more (about RM74 extra) than those excluding the community, effectively imposing a “discrimination premium.”
The report, which examines rental discrimination across the Klang Valley, said the cheapest rooms are also the most explicitly discriminatory against Indians, as 43.7 percent of listings below RM400 deliberately exclude them.
This was similar for Chinese renters, who were excluded from 26.6 percent of listings in the same category, the report said.
On the other hand, Malay renters experienced a different pattern of discrimination, as they were consistently excluded from listings across different room prices at rates between 5.5 and 8.5 percent.
Based on the data scraped, the report found that 42.8 percent of 35,367 listings analysed excluded at least one racial group, “making discrimination the single most common landlord stance on the platform”.
A significant factor identified in the report was location, with discrimination rates varying across rental areas.
‘Remove racial preference feature’
In a rebuttal, AOD executive director Jason Wee rejected iBilik’s attempt to frame its race preference feature as a tool for compatibility and encouraged it to look at the victims of rental exclusion.
He also urged iBilik to remove its racial preference feature immediately.
"When a platform allows a landlord to tick a box that excludes an entire racial group from being considered as tenants, the outcome is exclusion on the basis of race.
“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.
He also shared the experiences of two people; one, an Indian Malaysian woman who was rejected by landlords and agents over 300 times despite having a strong financial and rental track record.
Another person affected was a Kadazan man from Sabah - who was told a room was reserved for "local Malaysians only" by an agent who did not even recognise him as a citizen.
"That landlord is making a blanket judgment about an individual based on generalisations of their race. That is what the word discrimination means, and no amount of reframing it as compatibility or living requirements changes the nature of the act.
"When a platform tells its users that filtering tenants by race is simply part of narrowing down listings, it communicates that this behaviour is acceptable and expected.
“The people who bear the cost of that message are citizens who are denied housing not because of their conduct, income, or references - but because of the colour of their skin," Wee added.
He said that 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.
Wee alleged that iBilik stands alone in having made the "deliberate design choice to build this capability into its system".
"If iBilik is sincere in its claim that it does not support racial discrimination, the path forward is clear: remove the feature," Wee stressed. - Mkini
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