It’s a sadly all-too-common issue faced by renters in Singapore: Prejudiced landlords. Filipino, PRC and Indian citizens often get the brunt of bigotry, being turned away by property agents at the mention of their origin country. The more crooked landlords go one step further to reject interested renters of an ethnicity different from them.
Not even Darius Cheng — founder of Eduardo Saverin-backed property search engine 99.co — was exempted from the same issue that plagues the local property market.
In a blogpost, Cheng describes the pain and disappointment he faced first-hand when looking for a place to rent — a significant volume of property agents turned him down as soon they found out his wife is Indian. This, despite the fact that Cheng’s wife, Roshni, is the founder and CEO of theAsianparent network.
To a certain extent, the property agents aren’t at fault; they’re merely conveying the preferences of the landlord. But then again, the act of accepting and being a medium of prejudiced mentality is a rather questionable morality.
“I understand the idea of discrimination intellectually and recognise that it exists, but it was not until this moment that I caught a glimpse of what it actually means to be discriminated against,” Cheng wrote.
Committed to ending such practices, Cheng took action by launching a campaign called “REGARDLESS-OF-RACE” on 99.co. What it does is allow agents and landlords to indicate that their rental listings are open to all ethnicities or nationalities — and these listings will get prominently featured on the site’s homepage. Meanwhile, all other folks who aren’t so into tolerance will still have their listings on the site. Just not so easily discovered.
It’s a pretty smart move. Prejudiced agents and landlords will soon find that their listings aren’t getting any attention on one of Singapore’s biggest property websites, and that means less interest. Cheng hopes his initiative will help build momentum to create a more inclusive rental market and make discriminatory practices “economically unviable”.
Cheng also speaks of Chinese privilege, and how he knows that people of other races don’t have it as easy as he does.
“To me, the true hero of this story is my wife, and the many like her who have been discriminated against because of race, nationality, gender or orientation. They continue to get up in the morning everyday, get out there to build their lives and to build this nation together with the rest of us. I am a straight male Chinese Singaporean, I am acutely aware that I have it as good as it gets, I almost feel guilty for my privileges save for the fact that I did not get them by choice either.”
It’s hard not to connect his initiative to a recent controversy regarding 99.co, in which he fired a newly-hired marketing director for making bigoted remarks about Singaporeans (over Pokémon Go, nonetheless). In his apology on behalf of the company, Cheng also expressed the same hope that Singaporeans would not spread “messages of hate and division, but instead embrace our diversity”.
