I鈥檝e been helping a friend who is new to 麻豆传媒映画look for a place to live. This, as you all know, is no small feat.
In addition to contending with our ever-shrinking vacancy rate, out-of-towners have to figure out some of Vancouver鈥檚 quirks before they can find a place to call home. For one, we, apparently unlike the rest of the country, favour Craigslist over Kijiji as our go-to source for classifed ads. For another, there is a recurring theme among them.
Based on my perusal of , a high percentage of people with affordable, funky, well-located places to share seem to be looking for roommates that are clean, quiet, respectful and, above all, female. This does not help my friend, for he, alas, is male.
Now, it鈥檚 hard for me to shed too many tears for the male renter. Casual sexism, belittlement and harassment aside, women earn less than men and hence our hefty 麻豆传媒映画rent cheques take a bigger bite out of our income.
So there鈥檚 a part of me that derives some schadenfreude from the fact that, in this one arena, the single man seems to be the unabashed loser.
Another part of me, a bigger part, feels sorry for my nice, clean, quiet, respectful male friends who鈥檝e talked of the difficulties of finding a decent place to live for years. The journalist part of me wondered whether this blatant gender discrimination was legal.
Turns out, yes, in certain circumstances.
鈥淭here are exceptions under the human rights code where it鈥檚 permissible to discriminate with respect to tenancy,鈥� says Robyn Durling, communications director at the B.C. Human Rights Clinic. As it turns out, Section 10 of the states that you can reserve premises for certain classes of people, those over 55 say, or those with physical or mental disabilities.
鈥淥r,鈥� Durling continued, 鈥渋f you share a bedroom, bathroom or cooking facilities, you can discriminate.鈥�
There are valid reasons for that, he pointed out. Some women do not want to share bathrooms or bedrooms with men, and ostensibly vice versa. Likewise, Jewish people who keep Kosher may not want to share kitchens with non-Kosher folks, vegetarians with meat-eaters and so on.
It makes sense. The roommate relationship is by far the most delicate, strange and intimate many of us will ever have. There鈥檚 so much potential for things to go horribly wrong.
Why complicate that with factors you know could breed conflict or discomfort?
But that鈥檚 shared living situations.
Landlords, on the other hand, are not supposed to discriminate on the basis of sex, race, sexual orientation, family status or any other factor that isn鈥檛 in keeping with our human rights law. David Hutniak, CEO of ., was adamant he counsels his members to make tenancy decisions based on objective criteria such as credit checks.
鈥淲e have lawyers come in and talk to our members about human rights,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e very adamant [discrimination] is unacceptable and unprofessional.鈥�
It鈥檚 good to know landlords have access to that education. Indeed, I rarely see discriminatory preferences in their postings. In person, however, biases are sometimes glaringly evident.
My own experience is that single women and couples tend to have an edge. I once shamelessly batted my eyelashes for a perfect studio at an unbelievable price at a time when I was broke and desperate for a place to live.
(I did, however, pay the price of living with a creepy landlord who rifled through my laundry, threatened my then-boyfriend, and gave me a bad reference when I moved out.)
Another friend said she鈥檚 had landlords explicitly tell her they prefer to rent to females because they are generally tidier and quieter. And when her former boyfriend roomed with a female friend, the landlords became abusive when they found out the pair wasn鈥檛 a couple. Another friend, a black man, said he felt he鈥檇 been discriminated against, but wasn鈥檛 sure whether it was on the basis of gender or race.
Discrimination in the rental world is nothing if not idiosyncratic, however. A different friend said his landlords preferred single men since 鈥渢hey tend to want less stuff fixed鈥� or can do it themselves. But they had their limits. 鈥淭hey didn鈥檛 want two guys unless they were gay.鈥�
I should note, none of this shows up in the official channels. I called the Human Rights Clinic, the Tenants Resource Advisory Centre and Landlords B.C. looking for documentation to back up these anecdotes. No one could produce a thing.
In fact, Durling said he rarely hears of cases regarding discrimination in tenancy at all. When he does, it鈥檚 usually to do with family status 鈥� for instance, a single mother rejected for having kids. So maybe it鈥檚 all overblown, or my friends just have bad luck.
Or maybe we just all realize that being a renter means butting up against bias and there鈥檚 really nothing you can do but cross your fingers and hope that it鈥檚 in your favour.
