16 ms·

Sorry, your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you

94 points by oumua_don17 4y ago

hackpert 4y ago
A similar thing happened to me and my partner in the US, in a fairly liberal part, so I'm not entirely surprised that it's happening in SEA. People wouldn't rent to us because we told them we cook at home and these white folks were like "but Indian food smells!"
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- D13Fd 4y ago
  That may be illegal depending on what type of rental setup they had. https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/fair_housing_act_overview https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/f...
- markbnj 4y ago
  > white folks were like "but Indian food smells!" It does smell... freaking delicious.
- businessman0001 4y ago
  I'm Indian, but if they claim Indian food smells, you could ask them to write down in the contract that you will bear the damage caused by the smell sticking onto the surfaces it interacts with, either by replacing/repairing what's damaged or paying for the replacements/repairs which could be included in the caution deposit. Another reassurance would be to write in the contract that the house owner can legally enter the property to check/inspect for any damages to re-assure and charge for any damages. The problem with these clauses is that people can exploit you.
cafxx 4y ago
Yup, common occurrence also here in Tokyo. If you are not Japanese you can expect quite a few rejections, as well as having to pay extra "guarantor" fees, and in general higher than average rent. And, mind you, I'm probably among the lucky ones... if you're from other Asian countries you can probably expect even worse.
- totetsu 4y ago
  Yes, I was told a few time unashamedly that they didn't have the owners permission to rent to foreigners, and a few more times that they were hoping a 'family' would move in. In the end I wasn't even interested in renting from an owner that thought I was one of the good foreigners, but I relented when I found a place I liked.
boomboomsubban 4y ago
This is among the strangest advertisements I've read. "Are you strongly against discrimination? Then rent from us!"
- blueflow 4y ago
  Virtue signalling as a form of self-promotion. I feel this makes them look more shady but i don't know if their conversion numbers reflect that.
  - searchableguy 4y ago
    It does not to me. It is similar to pet friendly, unmarried couple friendly, foreigner friendly, etc tag. It wastes less time of everyone while law enforcement cracks down on discrimination of protected classes.
    - blueflow 4y ago
      Might be a cultural difference.
- analog31 4y ago
  Especially since advertising that way in my hometown in Michigan would have gotten their business firebombed.
- jmknoll 4y ago
  It's a really weak article in general. 500 words about a single anecdote with no supporting data or much useful context at all, but which manages to name drop two companies and their founders (one of which is presumably the sponsor of the article), along with some new features that they're working on. I have no doubt that racism like this is a significant problem in Singapore, but this kind of product-placement content doesn't do any justice to the issue.
- LightG 4y ago
  Why? Not knowing anything about any of this except I know the type of discrimination happens. If a company is aware and possibly works against it happening, why wouldn't I say to myself, "You know what? These guys aren't @sssholes, let me go ahead and search their listings".
thematrixturtle 4y ago
Sadly common in Singapore. The usual excuse trotted out is that Indian cooking, particularly the use of ghee, leaves a strong smell in the kitchen that requires either extensive renovation to get rid of, or another Indian tenant. Singapore has a significant local Indian minority and many mainland Indian expats, but while public housing is forcibly desegregated with racial quotas, in the private market this means there are many condo developments like Tanjong Rhu that are majority-Indian (plus expats who are unaware or don't care).
- sn41 4y ago
  Since you mention it as an excuse, what do you think the real issue is?
  - wikfwikf 4y ago
    Racism?
searchableguy 4y ago
A lot of people have misconception that all Indian food is oily and strong in smell but that's far from true. That is the primary reason given for excluding Indian tenants everywhere. For some reason, north Indian food is over represented by a significant margin. On top of it, people expect restaurant style food to be cooked at home except nobody does that. Most young people do not use strong ghee or spices. With proper ventilation, it is not a problem at all.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  There is no shortage of contexts in which HN will happily tell me it is not ok for me to be able to do something because there are some other people who might do it wrong in a way that has some minor negative effect on others (heck, half the time the effect isn't even guaranteed, it's just a risk) and I should just bend over and take it with a grin because that's the pro social thing to do. Why is this any different? And to be clear, IDGAF about Indian food. IDGAF about people who microwave fish in the office. My dispute is with cognitive dissonance.
frankzander 4y ago
Because of that day to day racism I'm often very angry even if I'm not affected by that. Racism is a big evil.
- barking_biscuit 4y ago
  It's too bad kin-selection causes so many problems. It's also too bad we're stuck with it.
achow 4y ago
From 2016. I understand from friends that things have changed due to laws.
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  Having watched the struggles of an Indian friend who wanted to live outside an "Indian ghetto" (their words) this very year, I can assure you they have not.
- Victerius 4y ago
  I don't see how laws can prevent discrimination, to be honest. LLs can refuse to rent to anyone for arbitrary reasons without being required to divulge the true reason.
  - jrockway 4y ago
    It being illegal means you can drag the landlord to court and ask them to explain their thinking to the court. You can say, look, here's the income and rental histories and credit scores for your tenants in separate apartments, here's documentation saying we are above that, so what's the reason for the rejection. And, lying under oath is its own crime. This is like saying "murder shouldn't be illegal because everyone is just going to bury the body". It being illegal is how the investigation starts.
    - franciscop 4y ago
      No way, in most countries you also have the right to remain silent, or not say anything that could incriminate yourself, or can be assumed to lie if you are defending yourself. This is not how any of it works, at all. You cannot force someone to explain things in court like this in any kind of decent way, the laws are there to catch the openly racists IMHO. You probably even need probably cause/crime indication, which "I think, with no proof whatsoever, that he is racist" is not.
      - D13Fd 4y ago
TomVDB 4y ago
Was surprised to see “Singapore”, expected “Bay Area.” When I left my last rental after buying a house, my elderly white landlord asked me to help him put the property on Craigslist. When I did so and mentioned the Cupertino school district, he asked me to remove that part because “it would attract too many Indian families with kids” to avoid the curry smell. He had no issue with other Asian ethnicities, the previous tenant was Chinese. I did not remove it, but I don’t know anything about the next renter. I’ve since heard the same comment from people at work who rent out property. The curry smell is always the issue.
- raarts 4y ago
  Why? Globally speaking, the US is one of the least racist countries.
  - _fat_santa 4y ago
    I think it's hard for even Americans to wrap their heads around how big the country really is, and how diverse it is. While typically less racist, you still get a ton of it in various places, less about the place and more about the individual person. It's also hard to compare the US to other places. Japan and many other places are very homogenous societies, the US is the polar opposite and wears that with pride. At a high level you can say "Americans aren't racist" and that would mostly be true, but in the details everyone is different.
  - tokai 4y ago
    You have to post your source on that. The surveys I find put the US in the most racist countries category. Not the most worst of the worst, but definitely in the worst end.
    - raarts 4y ago
      https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...
franciscop 4y ago
This is one of the few instances that I've seen open discrimination agains white western people in Japan. In my journey for renting a place, after a couple of visits and getting a "no because he's a gaikokujin (foreigner)" I asked the agent to disclose it firstly. He did, but tactfully: he is a foreigner who is learning Japanese and came to the university in Japan and is hired by traditional company X and blabla. Still somewhere like 25-50% straight up rejections, but at least those were 1-minute waste instead of 30-60 min waste of time. And I was looking in the "high market in Tokyo", which I guess is probably the least discriminatory in the whole Japan. I also cannot imagine what non-western foreigner suffer (who are normally discriminated against a lot more).
- orbital-decay 4y ago
  Might it be because of the additional legal requirements for a landlord in case of foreign tenants? Or it's really because they don't like non-Japanese?
  - post_break 4y ago
    I think you already know the answer. I've seen people complain because they think foreigners don't know how to properly recycle waste in japan and that was the cause for not renting to gaijin.
  - sithadmin 4y ago
    Combination of xenophobia as well as perceived liability issues related to early lease termination. There's a perception that foreigners will renege on the rental contract and simply leave the country early without consequences. In certain fields of expat work, the reputation isn't entirely undeserved.
  - barking_biscuit 4y ago
    Most Japanese people are really friendly and have pretty good attitudes towards westerners. The difficulty arises when there is a relationship between the two parties that may at some point require settling a dispute or problem solving between the individuals and it's way outside their comfort zone. They don't necessarily have a problem with the individuals (though there are a few older people who live around military bases that do), but they clearly have a problem with how such situations make them feel. One time I wanted to go into a restaurant and there weren't any signs anywhere that said 'Japanese only' or anything like that, but I rocked up to the door and made an inquiry in Japanese to the lady on the door and some guy from in behind came through and was like 'sorry, no foreigners' and she turned to him and said 'no, it's ok he speaks Japanese' and I went in and had a meal without any problems. It definitely offends my western sensibilities to be exclusionary in that way, but I think the thing native English speakers take for granted is that it's a lot easier to have an open and inclusive society like we try to when we can make a pretty safe assumption that the people we're including will be able to communicate with us to an adequate standard. I'm fluent in Japanese. It was a really hard language that took a lot to master. I have an excellent sense of the range of English abilities of Japanese people. The language barrier is a huge factor in the discomfort felt. Then there's the cultural norms. Japanese people tend to talk about other Japanese people as if everyone has baked into them the same set of rules / behaviors / assumptions. When that goes out the window, I think a decent proportion of them don't quite know how to mentally simulate how they think such a person will behave other than it'll possibly (and maybe probably) be in violation of at least some of the norms that they kind of rely on. It always makes me pretty sad when people level comments about native English speaking countries being racist etc and then you look at how much poorer you'd fare in comparison in the general case if you were to live in their country.
ankittyagi 4y ago
I faced same problem in Canada. Vietnamese owner refused to rent me a place citing he does not allow Indian tenants because they are smelly.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  You have various legal remedies in Canada which do not exist, in practice, in Singapore.
- tomrod 4y ago
  Wow this really hits me -- racism is a bad choice function (in the stats/ML sense). The landlord doesn't want "smelly" people, and their experience is "If SMELLY then INDIAN." But that's going to have a huge false positive rate. And SMELLY is not an attribute of INDIAN, so the false negative rate is also going to be huge. JFC, that's awful and I'm sorry that happened to you.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I think it is more “If Indian, then x% likelier than average to cause $y in expenses due to odor issues”. And of course, they would not have to make this exclusive to Indians.
timwaagh 4y ago
Landlording is something that is likely to make a person more racist. A couple of bad experiences and you start preferring people similar to those that did not give trouble in the past.
- yardie 4y ago
  Too bad there isn't a service that could look into the historical background of prospective tenants to gain references, criminal, credit, job and salary information. Completely objective and mostly without inherent prejudices. We may even call it something like "a background check". Just spitballing ideas!
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    How well do background checks work on foreigners?
  - rowanG077 4y ago
    Because someone who has a stolen food from a store once is a bad tenant? Or someone who once forget to pay a credit card bill is bad tenant? Landlords should simply not be allowed to deny a potential tenant unless they can't pay. You don't play games with living essentials.
    - jokethrowaway 4y ago
      You've obviously never been in the position of being elderly, living in a country where pension funds got dilapidated by politicians (no matter how much you paid into it), needing money and your only source of income being a flat you're renting. My dad had one squatter, who was a respectable 60 years old lady: she just stopped paying and the legal and justice system is so shit that it took more than a year to get her out of my dad's flat - meanwhile she trashed the flat, changed the gates to lock us out and started burning stuff. You don't get to decide who lives in my property, I do and you can be damn sure I'll think very hard what's my chance the tenant will pay or not based on any data I have available. If they're students or asylum seekers they're more likely to trash the place and go unpunished. It would be less relevant if I could reclaim my flat immediately (fine, I'll eat a loss of a month of rent) after breach of contract, but that's not the world we live in.
totetsu 4y ago
Having been on the end of rental discrimination It's very frustrating. But I still find this 'no asians/agents' real-estate ad clip funny https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lyex2tSUyA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lyex2tSUyA
yardie 4y ago
It's so strange to see how racism and discrimination is carried out in other countries. Even more so when that country is a highly developed like Singapore. Being from the US where housing is highly protected, due mostly to decades of racial discrimination, I'm just thinking "holy shit they'd be eaten alive with the lawsuits coming their way for so blatantly putting it out there." Also, > 99.co is now tackling this by introducing an “all-races-welcome” indicator on its website. What this means is that agents and landlords can positively indicate that their properties can be rented by anyone regardless of ethnicity. Kind of sad they would even need to do this. Maybe William Gibsons Wired article about 90s Singapore was exactly right.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  Racism is relative.... I live in a former socialist country (with red stars, government owning the means of production and also a dictator), and things like affirmative action and prefered minority hiring would be seen as totally racist here.
  - unpopularopp 4y ago
    >Racism is relative. >things like affirmative action and prefered minority hiring would be seen as totally racist here No they aren't Whole Central Europe from Poland to Hungary through Ukraine and the Balkan and racist against Roma people. Pretty much everyone hates them. Most governments and the EU have special programs to help Roma people to get jobs because they are discriminated everywhere.
    - swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
      If a Roma individual took up a job and integrated with society, would they still be Roma?
      - deodorel 4y ago
        Probably not, and he will be shunned by his community. The Roma problem is at this moment unsolvable and it will lead to some sad situation at some point :(.
bayesian_horse 4y ago
We have this in Germany too. A study found that Germans/migrants with a Turkish background would end up paying more for the same quality or space. This leads to segregation and reinforces an ethnic class divide.
lettergram 4y ago
Every time I hear “America is racist” I remind people the world is far more racist - see story above. This is common practice everywhere. Europe, Asia, etc. they discriminate for different reasons and in different ways, but they all do it and it’s almost always overt. That’s the culture in the region, imo it’s not “wrong”. People self-select and who am I to discriminate against their culture? They do it for their reasons. I personally find it reprehensible, but that’s my cultural values. I’m proud of where I’m from (US), where we have spent generations working to mitigate any form of discrimination based on race, gender or creed. It’s not perfect, but we strive in the right direction.
- yunohn 4y ago
  > remind people the world is far more racist > generations working to mitigate any form of discrimination I would definitely agree that all humans have the capacity to be racist (other-ist) and that racism is not confined to the USA (obviously). But it’s ridiculous to claim that somehow “it’s worse than the USA” and that the USA has mitigated it all, because that’s easily disproved by speaking to any minority person.
  - shlant 4y ago
    > that the USA has mitigated it all, because that’s easily disproved by speaking to any minority person. The OP literally said "It’s not perfect, but we strive in the right direction" in the next sentence
    - wikfwikf 4y ago
      The claim that the US is not perfect and the claim that it is far less racist than the rest of the world are very very different.
      - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
        I don’t see why that is the case, other than the fact that you disagree with the second sentence and not the first. Doesn’t make the sentences logically incompatible.
Ylmaz 4y ago
Hotels in my city refuse Indian guests. They had to renovate rooms all the time after their visits. It was not worth it anymore. (Central Europe)
- sn41 4y ago
  Prague?
tibbydudeza 4y ago
Afaik Singaporean housing is based on a govt racial quota system - if you sell/lease your property it must match to the demarcated race for that area - there are numbers. It seems that he is an outlier being a mixed race couple - dunno how that works in that case ????. Also Singapore in the early days suffered from race riots between it's Chinese/Malay/Tamil (Indian) citizens and the founders did not want racial ghettos to form or a repeat of racial strife. I think it is a good system in a multi-cultural society - here in South Africa we see what problems and issues arise out of this type of segregation.
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  Racial quotas only apply to buying public housing. Private housing and leases on public housing are a free-for-all.
  - tibbydudeza 4y ago
    https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/02/singapore-rental-racism-prc-and-indian-tenants-often-deemed-undesirable.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/02/singapore-rental-racism-prc-... "When co-founder of property listings website 99.co Darius Cheung and his pregnant wife Roshni Mahtani" Now this is old article - circa 2017
- baybal2 4y ago
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
Brings to mind those poor african textile traders that were force evicted during the whole "covid was brought in by foreigners" hysteria in china. Which is tolerated and encouraged by the censors. Yes the world is a horrifying racist place with only america and europe discussing and fighting it openly. Shame based cultures seem to be more prone to sweaping such problems under the rug instead of solving them.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  I wonder how our culture looks from that point of view. Like some freak who is into self-humilation? I also do not understand how one can innovate in a culture that subscribes to harmony (aka societal peace) as a basic value. Any creative destruction is disharmonious. Google maps destroyed the atlas-schoolbook buisness and there was nothing nice or harmonious about that.. Just better maps, free of charge, a new ecosystem springing up around what replaced the old eco system..
cupachabra 4y ago
Wow thats crazy and would exclude a sizeable market in countries like the UK.
throwawayarnty 4y ago
As another anecdote. It is common for apartment ads in Netherlands to explicitly say “no foreigners!” in their ads. Which was a shock to me when first seeing them on Facebook by 18-22 year old Dutch university students offering rooms. Extremely offensive if this ad would show up in usa or other new world countries.
thowerui23423 4y ago
Is this a Singapore thing ? There was a video trending on Reddit where a Korean streamer going around SG in normal summer dress was accosted by some rando woman telling her to cover up, else the "indians will rape you". Quite frankly, reading the propaganda coming out of Western outlets over the course of my whole life (and for 400+ years of occidental "anti-pagan" hate and lies), I'm so tired as to be not even elicit a reaction.
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  No, it's a racist thing. These attitudes exist in Singapore, but they're not tolerated and a university professor saying similar things was fired and investigated by police for it. https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ngee-ann-poly-to-fire-lecturer-who-made-racist-remarks-to-mixed-race-couple https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ngee-ann-poly-to-fire...
slybot 4y ago
I have experienced similar discrimination while ago. It clearly shows some streotypes against certain nationalities. If it is not a quota issue then first thing comes to mind is food. I know it sucks but in an open market, as a property owner the landlord is free to choose the tenant and needs to be respected.
system16 4y ago
In many parts of Canada, you have reverse racism where the - nationally speaking - minorities in certain cities (Richmond and Brampton especially) own the majority of properties. It's not uncommon to see Craigslist or Kijiji rental ads stating "Indian only" or "Chinese only" and refusing rentals to other races.
- barking_biscuit 4y ago
  It's not actually reverse racism. It's just racism.
Bhilai 4y ago
For westerners in thread complaining about the smell of Indian food/curries, guess what, your food smells too (meat being cooked/bbq'ed smells yucky to vegetarians who have never experienced meat.) Even your bodies have a rotten cheesy odor. I am not being racist, I dont care what anyone cooks or eats. Its just a matter of perspective and I am providing a perspective that you have probably not heard about yourselves.
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  Interestingly enough, in parts of India, it can be quite difficult to rent an apartment if you're not a vegetarian. (Although this is more an issue of caste than race.)
- lashkhi 4y ago
raynr 4y ago
This is, still, an extremely common practice here in Singapore. In my experience this is because of racism. I say this because I present as the majority race and I know Chinese landlords who have complained to me, in person, about "all those Indians taking over the neighbourhood", and many worse things that they think are funny and that I would laugh at because I present as the majority race. The common reason given is that Indian cooking involves lots of spices that stain and remain in the kitchen, necessitating either a kitchen overhaul prior to renting to a new tenant, or renting to another Indian family. I understand and am sympathetic towards this reason, having frustratingly burnt-in a few permanent turmeric stains into my work surfaces. But just a little. To be a landlord in Singapore is to be of a financial status that most Singaporeans are not a part of. And again, I also know it is simply a smoke screen, because these same landlords are also the ones complaining about "all of the Indians in the neighbourhood"! And making variations of the blinding smile joke, bobbing their heads mockingly, wrinkling their noses in disgust at the imagined smell of food or perfumes or incense, complaining about the noise they make, and advising you earnestly to never invest in property in known Indian enclaves. Thank goodness not everyone is like this, and thank goodness for the enforced racial quotas of government housing.
system16 4y ago
> 99.co is now tackling this by introducing an “all-races-welcome” indicator on its website. Despite all the patting themselves on the back, when they implemented this they only added an "all-races-welcome" tag to listings that allowed all races. Landlords who discriminated against others based on race were still very much welcome on the platform.
businessman0001 4y ago
This is a very good startup opportunity in this. If anyone can solve this, they can capture a decent market for global workers.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

94 points by oumua_don17 4y ago

A similar thing happened to me and my partner in the US, in a fairly liberal part, so I'm not entirely surprised that it's happening in SEA. People wouldn't rent to us because we told them we cook at home and these white folks were like "but Indian food smells!"

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
D13Fd 4y ago
That may be illegal depending on what type of rental setup they had. https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/fair_housing_act_overview https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/f...
markbnj 4y ago
> white folks were like "but Indian food smells!" It does smell... freaking delicious.
businessman0001 4y ago
I'm Indian, but if they claim Indian food smells, you could ask them to write down in the contract that you will bear the damage caused by the smell sticking onto the surfaces it interacts with, either by replacing/repairing what's damaged or paying for the replacements/repairs which could be included in the caution deposit. Another reassurance would be to write in the contract that the house owner can legally enter the property to check/inspect for any damages to re-assure and charge for any damages. The problem with these clauses is that people can exploit you.

cafxx 4y ago

Yup, common occurrence also here in Tokyo. If you are not Japanese you can expect quite a few rejections, as well as having to pay extra "guarantor" fees, and in general higher than average rent. And, mind you, I'm probably among the lucky ones... if you're from other Asian countries you can probably expect even worse.

totetsu 4y ago
Yes, I was told a few time unashamedly that they didn't have the owners permission to rent to foreigners, and a few more times that they were hoping a 'family' would move in. In the end I wasn't even interested in renting from an owner that thought I was one of the good foreigners, but I relented when I found a place I liked.

boomboomsubban 4y ago

This is among the strangest advertisements I've read. "Are you strongly against discrimination? Then rent from us!"

blueflow 4y ago
Virtue signalling as a form of self-promotion. I feel this makes them look more shady but i don't know if their conversion numbers reflect that.
- searchableguy 4y ago
  It does not to me. It is similar to pet friendly, unmarried couple friendly, foreigner friendly, etc tag. It wastes less time of everyone while law enforcement cracks down on discrimination of protected classes.
  - blueflow 4y ago
    Might be a cultural difference.
analog31 4y ago
Especially since advertising that way in my hometown in Michigan would have gotten their business firebombed.
jmknoll 4y ago
It's a really weak article in general. 500 words about a single anecdote with no supporting data or much useful context at all, but which manages to name drop two companies and their founders (one of which is presumably the sponsor of the article), along with some new features that they're working on. I have no doubt that racism like this is a significant problem in Singapore, but this kind of product-placement content doesn't do any justice to the issue.
LightG 4y ago
Why? Not knowing anything about any of this except I know the type of discrimination happens. If a company is aware and possibly works against it happening, why wouldn't I say to myself, "You know what? These guys aren't @sssholes, let me go ahead and search their listings".

thematrixturtle 4y ago

Sadly common in Singapore. The usual excuse trotted out is that Indian cooking, particularly the use of ghee, leaves a strong smell in the kitchen that requires either extensive renovation to get rid of, or another Indian tenant. Singapore has a significant local Indian minority and many mainland Indian expats, but while public housing is forcibly desegregated with racial quotas, in the private market this means there are many condo developments like Tanjong Rhu that are majority-Indian (plus expats who are unaware or don't care).

sn41 4y ago
Since you mention it as an excuse, what do you think the real issue is?
- wikfwikf 4y ago
  Racism?

searchableguy 4y ago

A lot of people have misconception that all Indian food is oily and strong in smell but that's far from true. That is the primary reason given for excluding Indian tenants everywhere. For some reason, north Indian food is over represented by a significant margin. On top of it, people expect restaurant style food to be cooked at home except nobody does that. Most young people do not use strong ghee or spices. With proper ventilation, it is not a problem at all.

throwaway0a5e 4y ago
There is no shortage of contexts in which HN will happily tell me it is not ok for me to be able to do something because there are some other people who might do it wrong in a way that has some minor negative effect on others (heck, half the time the effect isn't even guaranteed, it's just a risk) and I should just bend over and take it with a grin because that's the pro social thing to do. Why is this any different? And to be clear, IDGAF about Indian food. IDGAF about people who microwave fish in the office. My dispute is with cognitive dissonance.

frankzander 4y ago

Because of that day to day racism I'm often very angry even if I'm not affected by that. Racism is a big evil.

barking_biscuit 4y ago
It's too bad kin-selection causes so many problems. It's also too bad we're stuck with it.

achow 4y ago

From 2016. I understand from friends that things have changed due to laws.

thematrixturtle 4y ago
Having watched the struggles of an Indian friend who wanted to live outside an "Indian ghetto" (their words) this very year, I can assure you they have not.
Victerius 4y ago
I don't see how laws can prevent discrimination, to be honest. LLs can refuse to rent to anyone for arbitrary reasons without being required to divulge the true reason.
- jrockway 4y ago
  It being illegal means you can drag the landlord to court and ask them to explain their thinking to the court. You can say, look, here's the income and rental histories and credit scores for your tenants in separate apartments, here's documentation saying we are above that, so what's the reason for the rejection. And, lying under oath is its own crime. This is like saying "murder shouldn't be illegal because everyone is just going to bury the body". It being illegal is how the investigation starts.
  - franciscop 4y ago
    No way, in most countries you also have the right to remain silent, or not say anything that could incriminate yourself, or can be assumed to lie if you are defending yourself. This is not how any of it works, at all. You cannot force someone to explain things in court like this in any kind of decent way, the laws are there to catch the openly racists IMHO. You probably even need probably cause/crime indication, which "I think, with no proof whatsoever, that he is racist" is not.
    - D13Fd 4y ago

TomVDB 4y ago

Was surprised to see “Singapore”, expected “Bay Area.” When I left my last rental after buying a house, my elderly white landlord asked me to help him put the property on Craigslist. When I did so and mentioned the Cupertino school district, he asked me to remove that part because “it would attract too many Indian families with kids” to avoid the curry smell. He had no issue with other Asian ethnicities, the previous tenant was Chinese. I did not remove it, but I don’t know anything about the next renter. I’ve since heard the same comment from people at work who rent out property. The curry smell is always the issue.

raarts 4y ago
Why? Globally speaking, the US is one of the least racist countries.
- _fat_santa 4y ago
  I think it's hard for even Americans to wrap their heads around how big the country really is, and how diverse it is. While typically less racist, you still get a ton of it in various places, less about the place and more about the individual person. It's also hard to compare the US to other places. Japan and many other places are very homogenous societies, the US is the polar opposite and wears that with pride. At a high level you can say "Americans aren't racist" and that would mostly be true, but in the details everyone is different.
- tokai 4y ago
  You have to post your source on that. The surveys I find put the US in the most racist countries category. Not the most worst of the worst, but definitely in the worst end.
  - raarts 4y ago
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...

franciscop 4y ago

This is one of the few instances that I've seen open discrimination agains white western people in Japan. In my journey for renting a place, after a couple of visits and getting a "no because he's a gaikokujin (foreigner)" I asked the agent to disclose it firstly. He did, but tactfully: he is a foreigner who is learning Japanese and came to the university in Japan and is hired by traditional company X and blabla. Still somewhere like 25-50% straight up rejections, but at least those were 1-minute waste instead of 30-60 min waste of time. And I was looking in the "high market in Tokyo", which I guess is probably the least discriminatory in the whole Japan. I also cannot imagine what non-western foreigner suffer (who are normally discriminated against a lot more).

orbital-decay 4y ago
Might it be because of the additional legal requirements for a landlord in case of foreign tenants? Or it's really because they don't like non-Japanese?
- post_break 4y ago
  I think you already know the answer. I've seen people complain because they think foreigners don't know how to properly recycle waste in japan and that was the cause for not renting to gaijin.
- sithadmin 4y ago
  Combination of xenophobia as well as perceived liability issues related to early lease termination. There's a perception that foreigners will renege on the rental contract and simply leave the country early without consequences. In certain fields of expat work, the reputation isn't entirely undeserved.
- barking_biscuit 4y ago
  Most Japanese people are really friendly and have pretty good attitudes towards westerners. The difficulty arises when there is a relationship between the two parties that may at some point require settling a dispute or problem solving between the individuals and it's way outside their comfort zone. They don't necessarily have a problem with the individuals (though there are a few older people who live around military bases that do), but they clearly have a problem with how such situations make them feel. One time I wanted to go into a restaurant and there weren't any signs anywhere that said 'Japanese only' or anything like that, but I rocked up to the door and made an inquiry in Japanese to the lady on the door and some guy from in behind came through and was like 'sorry, no foreigners' and she turned to him and said 'no, it's ok he speaks Japanese' and I went in and had a meal without any problems. It definitely offends my western sensibilities to be exclusionary in that way, but I think the thing native English speakers take for granted is that it's a lot easier to have an open and inclusive society like we try to when we can make a pretty safe assumption that the people we're including will be able to communicate with us to an adequate standard. I'm fluent in Japanese. It was a really hard language that took a lot to master. I have an excellent sense of the range of English abilities of Japanese people. The language barrier is a huge factor in the discomfort felt. Then there's the cultural norms. Japanese people tend to talk about other Japanese people as if everyone has baked into them the same set of rules / behaviors / assumptions. When that goes out the window, I think a decent proportion of them don't quite know how to mentally simulate how they think such a person will behave other than it'll possibly (and maybe probably) be in violation of at least some of the norms that they kind of rely on. It always makes me pretty sad when people level comments about native English speaking countries being racist etc and then you look at how much poorer you'd fare in comparison in the general case if you were to live in their country.

ankittyagi 4y ago

I faced same problem in Canada. Vietnamese owner refused to rent me a place citing he does not allow Indian tenants because they are smelly.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
You have various legal remedies in Canada which do not exist, in practice, in Singapore.
tomrod 4y ago
Wow this really hits me -- racism is a bad choice function (in the stats/ML sense). The landlord doesn't want "smelly" people, and their experience is "If SMELLY then INDIAN." But that's going to have a huge false positive rate. And SMELLY is not an attribute of INDIAN, so the false negative rate is also going to be huge. JFC, that's awful and I'm sorry that happened to you.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I think it is more “If Indian, then x% likelier than average to cause $y in expenses due to odor issues”. And of course, they would not have to make this exclusive to Indians.

timwaagh 4y ago

Landlording is something that is likely to make a person more racist. A couple of bad experiences and you start preferring people similar to those that did not give trouble in the past.

yardie 4y ago
Too bad there isn't a service that could look into the historical background of prospective tenants to gain references, criminal, credit, job and salary information. Completely objective and mostly without inherent prejudices. We may even call it something like "a background check". Just spitballing ideas!
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  How well do background checks work on foreigners?
- rowanG077 4y ago
  Because someone who has a stolen food from a store once is a bad tenant? Or someone who once forget to pay a credit card bill is bad tenant? Landlords should simply not be allowed to deny a potential tenant unless they can't pay. You don't play games with living essentials.
  - jokethrowaway 4y ago
    You've obviously never been in the position of being elderly, living in a country where pension funds got dilapidated by politicians (no matter how much you paid into it), needing money and your only source of income being a flat you're renting. My dad had one squatter, who was a respectable 60 years old lady: she just stopped paying and the legal and justice system is so shit that it took more than a year to get her out of my dad's flat - meanwhile she trashed the flat, changed the gates to lock us out and started burning stuff. You don't get to decide who lives in my property, I do and you can be damn sure I'll think very hard what's my chance the tenant will pay or not based on any data I have available. If they're students or asylum seekers they're more likely to trash the place and go unpunished. It would be less relevant if I could reclaim my flat immediately (fine, I'll eat a loss of a month of rent) after breach of contract, but that's not the world we live in.

totetsu 4y ago

Having been on the end of rental discrimination It's very frustrating. But I still find this 'no asians/agents' real-estate ad clip funny https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lyex2tSUyA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lyex2tSUyA

yardie 4y ago

It's so strange to see how racism and discrimination is carried out in other countries. Even more so when that country is a highly developed like Singapore. Being from the US where housing is highly protected, due mostly to decades of racial discrimination, I'm just thinking "holy shit they'd be eaten alive with the lawsuits coming their way for so blatantly putting it out there." Also, > 99.co is now tackling this by introducing an “all-races-welcome” indicator on its website. What this means is that agents and landlords can positively indicate that their properties can be rented by anyone regardless of ethnicity. Kind of sad they would even need to do this. Maybe William Gibsons Wired article about 90s Singapore was exactly right.

ajsnigrutin 4y ago
Racism is relative.... I live in a former socialist country (with red stars, government owning the means of production and also a dictator), and things like affirmative action and prefered minority hiring would be seen as totally racist here.
- unpopularopp 4y ago
  >Racism is relative. >things like affirmative action and prefered minority hiring would be seen as totally racist here No they aren't Whole Central Europe from Poland to Hungary through Ukraine and the Balkan and racist against Roma people. Pretty much everyone hates them. Most governments and the EU have special programs to help Roma people to get jobs because they are discriminated everywhere.
  - swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
    If a Roma individual took up a job and integrated with society, would they still be Roma?
    - deodorel 4y ago
      Probably not, and he will be shunned by his community. The Roma problem is at this moment unsolvable and it will lead to some sad situation at some point :(.

bayesian_horse 4y ago

We have this in Germany too. A study found that Germans/migrants with a Turkish background would end up paying more for the same quality or space. This leads to segregation and reinforces an ethnic class divide.

lettergram 4y ago

Every time I hear “America is racist” I remind people the world is far more racist - see story above. This is common practice everywhere. Europe, Asia, etc. they discriminate for different reasons and in different ways, but they all do it and it’s almost always overt. That’s the culture in the region, imo it’s not “wrong”. People self-select and who am I to discriminate against their culture? They do it for their reasons. I personally find it reprehensible, but that’s my cultural values. I’m proud of where I’m from (US), where we have spent generations working to mitigate any form of discrimination based on race, gender or creed. It’s not perfect, but we strive in the right direction.

yunohn 4y ago
> remind people the world is far more racist > generations working to mitigate any form of discrimination I would definitely agree that all humans have the capacity to be racist (other-ist) and that racism is not confined to the USA (obviously). But it’s ridiculous to claim that somehow “it’s worse than the USA” and that the USA has mitigated it all, because that’s easily disproved by speaking to any minority person.
- shlant 4y ago
  > that the USA has mitigated it all, because that’s easily disproved by speaking to any minority person. The OP literally said "It’s not perfect, but we strive in the right direction" in the next sentence
  - wikfwikf 4y ago
    The claim that the US is not perfect and the claim that it is far less racist than the rest of the world are very very different.
    - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
      I don’t see why that is the case, other than the fact that you disagree with the second sentence and not the first. Doesn’t make the sentences logically incompatible.

Ylmaz 4y ago

Hotels in my city refuse Indian guests. They had to renovate rooms all the time after their visits. It was not worth it anymore. (Central Europe)

sn41 4y ago
Prague?

tibbydudeza 4y ago

Afaik Singaporean housing is based on a govt racial quota system - if you sell/lease your property it must match to the demarcated race for that area - there are numbers. It seems that he is an outlier being a mixed race couple - dunno how that works in that case ????. Also Singapore in the early days suffered from race riots between it's Chinese/Malay/Tamil (Indian) citizens and the founders did not want racial ghettos to form or a repeat of racial strife. I think it is a good system in a multi-cultural society - here in South Africa we see what problems and issues arise out of this type of segregation.

thematrixturtle 4y ago
Racial quotas only apply to buying public housing. Private housing and leases on public housing are a free-for-all.
- tibbydudeza 4y ago
  https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/02/singapore-rental-racism-prc-and-indian-tenants-often-deemed-undesirable.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/02/singapore-rental-racism-prc-... "When co-founder of property listings website 99.co Darius Cheung and his pregnant wife Roshni Mahtani" Now this is old article - circa 2017
baybal2 4y ago

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

Brings to mind those poor african textile traders that were force evicted during the whole "covid was brought in by foreigners" hysteria in china. Which is tolerated and encouraged by the censors. Yes the world is a horrifying racist place with only america and europe discussing and fighting it openly. Shame based cultures seem to be more prone to sweaping such problems under the rug instead of solving them.

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
I wonder how our culture looks from that point of view. Like some freak who is into self-humilation? I also do not understand how one can innovate in a culture that subscribes to harmony (aka societal peace) as a basic value. Any creative destruction is disharmonious. Google maps destroyed the atlas-schoolbook buisness and there was nothing nice or harmonious about that.. Just better maps, free of charge, a new ecosystem springing up around what replaced the old eco system..

cupachabra 4y ago

Wow thats crazy and would exclude a sizeable market in countries like the UK.

throwawayarnty 4y ago

As another anecdote. It is common for apartment ads in Netherlands to explicitly say “no foreigners!” in their ads. Which was a shock to me when first seeing them on Facebook by 18-22 year old Dutch university students offering rooms. Extremely offensive if this ad would show up in usa or other new world countries.

thowerui23423 4y ago

Is this a Singapore thing ? There was a video trending on Reddit where a Korean streamer going around SG in normal summer dress was accosted by some rando woman telling her to cover up, else the "indians will rape you". Quite frankly, reading the propaganda coming out of Western outlets over the course of my whole life (and for 400+ years of occidental "anti-pagan" hate and lies), I'm so tired as to be not even elicit a reaction.

thematrixturtle 4y ago
No, it's a racist thing. These attitudes exist in Singapore, but they're not tolerated and a university professor saying similar things was fired and investigated by police for it. https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ngee-ann-poly-to-fire-lecturer-who-made-racist-remarks-to-mixed-race-couple https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ngee-ann-poly-to-fire...

slybot 4y ago

I have experienced similar discrimination while ago. It clearly shows some streotypes against certain nationalities. If it is not a quota issue then first thing comes to mind is food. I know it sucks but in an open market, as a property owner the landlord is free to choose the tenant and needs to be respected.

system16 4y ago

In many parts of Canada, you have reverse racism where the - nationally speaking - minorities in certain cities (Richmond and Brampton especially) own the majority of properties. It's not uncommon to see Craigslist or Kijiji rental ads stating "Indian only" or "Chinese only" and refusing rentals to other races.

barking_biscuit 4y ago
It's not actually reverse racism. It's just racism.

Bhilai 4y ago

For westerners in thread complaining about the smell of Indian food/curries, guess what, your food smells too (meat being cooked/bbq'ed smells yucky to vegetarians who have never experienced meat.) Even your bodies have a rotten cheesy odor. I am not being racist, I dont care what anyone cooks or eats. Its just a matter of perspective and I am providing a perspective that you have probably not heard about yourselves.

thematrixturtle 4y ago
Interestingly enough, in parts of India, it can be quite difficult to rent an apartment if you're not a vegetarian. (Although this is more an issue of caste than race.)
lashkhi 4y ago

raynr 4y ago

This is, still, an extremely common practice here in Singapore. In my experience this is because of racism. I say this because I present as the majority race and I know Chinese landlords who have complained to me, in person, about "all those Indians taking over the neighbourhood", and many worse things that they think are funny and that I would laugh at because I present as the majority race. The common reason given is that Indian cooking involves lots of spices that stain and remain in the kitchen, necessitating either a kitchen overhaul prior to renting to a new tenant, or renting to another Indian family. I understand and am sympathetic towards this reason, having frustratingly burnt-in a few permanent turmeric stains into my work surfaces. But just a little. To be a landlord in Singapore is to be of a financial status that most Singaporeans are not a part of. And again, I also know it is simply a smoke screen, because these same landlords are also the ones complaining about "all of the Indians in the neighbourhood"! And making variations of the blinding smile joke, bobbing their heads mockingly, wrinkling their noses in disgust at the imagined smell of food or perfumes or incense, complaining about the noise they make, and advising you earnestly to never invest in property in known Indian enclaves. Thank goodness not everyone is like this, and thank goodness for the enforced racial quotas of government housing.

system16 4y ago

> 99.co is now tackling this by introducing an “all-races-welcome” indicator on its website. Despite all the patting themselves on the back, when they implemented this they only added an "all-races-welcome" tag to listings that allowed all races. Landlords who discriminated against others based on race were still very much welcome on the platform.

businessman0001 4y ago

This is a very good startup opportunity in this. If anyone can solve this, they can capture a decent market for global workers.

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