Editorial: Landlords will get their way

A text to the editor last week caught the eagle eye of sub-editor Linda Hall.

It read: "Shocked to read an advert in the To Let column last week that read 'preferably Christians'! Is that morally right and what would the reaction be if the advert asked that only a certain race applied to rent the house?"

My reaction to it, politically correct or not, was fair enough - why waste everybody else's time? If Christians are the landlord's preference as tenants, then Christians is probably who they will choose. It just didn't strike me the same way as a reference to ethnicity or colour which would clearly be a breach of human rights legislation.

But it would appear that I am wrong. Ethical belief (lack of religious belief) is listed as a prohibited ground for discrimination. The exception is if the person concerned was seeking a flatmate, which they weren't in this case.

If seeking a flatmate one can apparently make references to age, colour, disability, employment status, ethical belief (lack of religious belief), ethnic or national origins, family status (having responsibility for children, being married to a particular person or being a relative of a particular person), marital status, political opinion (including having no political opinion), race, religious belief, gender and sexual orientation.

This interesting information came to light because a Fiji-Indian landlord had his rental property listing removed by Trade Me after he described his ideal tenants as "European".

He said a television show, Renters, had put him off ethnic tenants. "They're just a bit more messy, or they can be," he said. "Not everyone is. I keep an open mind."

Really?

He went on to say that several non-Europeans had applied for the apartment, in the central Auckland suburb of Grafton, and he had shown them through.

"At the end of the day, I haven't got anything against them ... but you don't want to go through what you see on all those TV programmes," he continued. "Renters clearly showed how students could leave your place in a mess, and people of different ethnicities just destroyed the place."

Of course it brought to light the undercurrent of racism that runs through this country, and not just based on colour.

Yesterday I heard someone describe a Dutchman who had annoyed her as "tight (word deleted)" When I told someone else what had been said, they added, "that would probably be correct". I admit, I laughed at the stereotyping. Even my former brother-in-law, who is Dutch, played on the hard-working, deep-pockets caricature.

Less funny is friends with obviously Maori surnames who have told me they have given false names to prospective landlords so they could get past the telephone interview and show them that they were clean-living, law-abiding, educated citizens just wanting a place to live.

The rub here though is, Human Rights Commission or not, our Fiji-Indian friend will almost certainly have his preferred tenants. Just as our Hawke's Bay-based landlord will have Christians in his accommodation, if there were any to be found.