77% of Facebook users agreed with the statement that racial discrimination was a practical feature of room rentals.
Image by Daniel Reche on Pexels.
23% of users polled felt racial discrimination was distasteful and should not exist in 2019 – but based on the results of the poll, most Malaysians seem to agree that racial bias should still be practised.
Does racial discrimination still have a place in Malaysia's room rental landscape?
77% of Facebook users agreed with the statement that racial discrimination was a practical feature of room rentals and 23% of users polled felt racial discrimination was distasteful and should not exist in 2019.
Some practical discrimination ensures that people are successfully integrated into new environments and can result in happier neighbourhoods. If the new arrival next door is a person just like you, there is less potential for conflict.
Birds of a feather flock together. Image by Afta Putta Gunawan on Pexels.
Racial diversity is one of Malaysia’s many unique selling points, but it can contradict our collective preference for conflict-free living.
39% of people who took the StarProperty Buyer Sentiment Survey in 2018 stated that they would not like to live in an area where everyone is of the same race, but in the same sense of practicality that was highlighted in our Facebook poll, 40% stated that they would prefer to live in an area that was racially homogeneous – 21% were undecided.
Would you like to live in an area where everyone is of the same race?
39% of people who took the StarProperty Buyer Sentiment Survey in 2018 stated that they would not like to live in an area where everyone is of the same race, 40% stated that they would prefer to live in an area that was racially homogeneous – 21% were undecided.
While the ethnic composition of our neighbourhoods garnered a near-even split in the Buyer Sentiment Survey, foreign ownership was a more polarising subject.
In the same survey, 53% agreed with the statement that Malaysian land should only be available to Malaysians – while 31% were open to the idea of foreigners owning real estate in the nation and 16% were undecided.
Should Malaysian land be available only to Malaysians?
53% agreed with the statement that Malaysian land should only be available to Malaysians – while 31% were open to the idea of foreigners owning real estate in the nation and 16% were undecided.
Housing Malaysians in the ever-present face of racial discrimination
Even before the events of May 2018, the federal government of Malaysia fielded a wide array of plans to facilitate the dream of home ownership for the majority of Malaysians – regardless of an individual’s ethnicity or generational claim to citizenship.
There have been the backing of crowdfunding and rent-to-own schemes, the incentivising of developers to lower prices and the imposition of price controls on materials, in addition to the scheduling of taxes on property speculation and the raising of minimum price limits for foreign buyers.
There have even been talks on the subject of revising Bumiputra discounts and quotas – but partaking in that discussion now could amount to political suicide ever since the response to the proposed ratification of the ICERD (International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination) in early 2019.
Protesters wearing raincoats during a gathering in Kuala Lumpur to protest the proposed ratification of the ICERD.
While developers are less concerned with the ethnicity of their customers than their ability to buy, racial discrimination still exists in the property industry – and to a larger extent, in the room rental landscape.
In 2015, it was found that the majority of room rental listings stated preferred ethnicities as a matter of course, and as recent as 2017, an investigation by the R.AGE team revealed that the practice was still deeply rooted in rental proceedings for working professionals.
In Part 2, we examine Malaysia's journey towards becoming a progressive and tolerant secular society.
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