Tenant Tales: Vice President ‘outs’ bigotry in the real estate rental market…….but it goes beyond ethnic origin.
Yemi Osinbajo
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, in a speech at Maiden Edition of the Policy Making & Good Governance Lecture Series of NIPSS, shared his experience on being discriminated against by a landlord because of his tribe and profession. He used this example to underscore his comments during the speech which had the title Creating A Homeland for All: Nation-Building in a Diverse Democracy.”
This experience, coming from Nigeria’s second citizen, generated many comments from the real estate community and the public. Especially as many could empathise with the Professor of Law as they had similar experiences or know those who had experienced it.
Discrimination in the property rental is Lagos State is quite interesting as the comments on our social media channels show. Apart from ethnic origin, there are stereotypes for marital status, gender, profession and even age. Single women have a hard time from landlords.
“She might has well have called me a prostitute’ a young woman with a good job in finance stated about a landlady in the Lekki axis. “I just cannot understand how having a ring on your finger automatically changes your ability to pay rent. And the idea that a single woman has many men coming around – how does that impact a landlord in any way?”
Lawyers, like Professor Osinbajo stated also have a hard time. But not only lawyers, man and officers in the military, police and other security forces also have a hard time getting accommodation. The reason for this, according to an estate agent who does not want to be named is the difficulty in evicting those tenants.
“We could not even serve a police officer in property, the Notice to Quit. He scared everyone off. When we eventually got the Court Order, the Bailiffs were afraid of effecting the judgement. We had to appeal to senior officers to plead with him to move out. He left with unpaid electricity bills as the electric power authorities could not cut him off. Bad as it sounds, we as agents will not rent out any property to uniformed personnel or Government agencies”
It is really sad though when landlords discriminate against people from a particular ethnic group just because they are part of the group. Every tenant should be assessed on their merit and circumstances rather than where they come from. On a lighter note, there is positive discrimination. When our Publisher, just like the VP was searching for a house to rent as he was about to get married, his landlady quickly let the house to him. Why? His wife-to-be is from Ondo State and according to the landlady, Ondo women are very good housekeepers and she could entrust the house to her!