Sometimes encouraged by landlords, British property agents are keeping out prospective east European tenants from renting properties, the BBC reported Tuesday. The finding echoes similar problems in India, where Bollywood actor Emraan Hashmi complained last week that a housing society in Mumbai had blocked his purchase of a luxury flat because he is a Muslim.
Housing agents in Boston, a seaside town in east England, were found to be using illegal techniques to fend off foreign workers viewing properties that had been put up for rent, a BBC undercover investigation found.
One firm told a Polish worker that an advertised property had already been let out while allowing a BBC television news employee to view the same property.
It is illegal in Britain to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, religious beliefs, national or ethnic origins.
Although one firm said it had created a new race-relations policy, human rights lawyers said the behaviour was a 'disturbing and shocking' breach of the Race Relations Act of 1976.
In addition, discrimination against potential tenants or even planning to do so with a landlord is a breach of a mandatory code of practice drawn up by the National Association of Estate Agents.
In India, Emraan Hashmi, who featured in films like 'Murder' and 'Gangster - A Love Story', wanted to buy a house in Mumbai's Pali Hill so that he could stay close to his parents.
He said he was refused the No Objection Certificate despite paying the token amount of Rs.100,000 and the society management ignored his parents' requests to meet them over the issue.
In the BBC report, an undercover reporter posing as a landlord was told by one estate agent employee, recorded covertly: 'You can tell as soon as they speak, you can't tell by looking at them; particularly the Eastern Europeans.
'We say to the migrants - well, which ones do you want to look at? Then we ring them back and say... 'Sorry, well, that one's gone'.'
British discrimination lawyers, as well as other estate agents, said landlords making such illegal demands on estate agents should be turned away immediately.
Arpita Dutt of the law firm Russell Jones and Walker, said: 'What they should be saying is, 'I can't do this, I can't act on those instructions. I can get you the best tenant for your property and try to meet those needs. But if I did it in the way you are asking me to do it, then that's against the law'.'
'It feels like we may as well, in some cases, be going back to the days of 'no blacks, no dogs, no Irish', because that's what is being perpetuated at the moment by some of the agents and the landlords.'
Award-winning human rights lawyer Louise Christian told the BBC: 'I felt horrified, that in this modern day, the provision of housing is being withheld from people who need it because of their nationality or their race. Housing is an essential service that everyone needs over their head.'
Malaysia Sun
Tuesday 4th August, 2009
(IANS)
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