I bet the rental application has an essay section.

[nickjong]

I only realized we were possibly too white and privileged to get the apartment towards the end of the hour-long showing with a particularly inquisitive potential landlord. At the time it didn't seem odd that she'd be curious where we grew up, but maybe I should have been more alarmed when she asked what our parents did and where my parents were

Comments

[zml]

In the absence of something glaringly different between rental applications, the landlord should probably just revert to first-come-first-serve. That said, it's fairly easy to enforce something like diversity from the sheer amount of legally available information - a simple employment/education history, credit check, etc., all show that you must be privileged. She didn't even have to break the law. ;p

That said, I find that one of the most irrational metrics for choosing between applicants.

[nickjong]

Yeah, I had always assumed the market was generally first-come-first-serve. I knew the market here would be tight, but I didn't anticipate that one consequence would be landlords engaging in additional screening. And I don't think this landlord consciously intends to select for diversity; I think she wants to rent to someone she likes, and she happens to be into multiculturalism. I guess she's just farther down the slippery slope (of exercising good judgement) than I would like.

[medryn]

Rent control ruins markets :-(

Isn't it sad to know that no matter where you rent, some of your neighbors will be paying half of what you do?

[cellio]

How frustrating!

I'm sympathetic to the landlord when the renter shares the premises with the landlord (rented room, duplex, that kind of thing). Otherwise, the landlord shouldn't be interacting with the tenant except in the routine business stuff, so whether you like the tenant shouldn't matter.

That said, being a landlord is a PITA; deadbeat tenants can stay for months, trash your property, and be hard to collect from. So I sympathize, and I've never been willing to be a landlord myself (even when it was taking a while to sell my previous house). It's messy, as you point out; a reasonable starting point turns very quickly into a slippery slope.

[nickjong]

Yeah, I witnessed firsthand how much of a PITA having tenants can be. My father bought some property while I was growing up, and he sunk an immense amount of time and energy into dealing with maintenance and later, at least one drawn-out eviction process. I certainly have no intention of trying my hand at this business.