Rental housing market marred by undemocratic and discriminatory features, especially for single women
Posted on – Thursday 06 April 23 at 12:30pm
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By Dr Anup Tripathi, Dr Moitrayee Das
Hyderabad: The rental housing market in Indian cities has been marred by its opaque, undemocratic and discriminatory character. This is significant given the proliferation of gated communities and private apartment complexes and townships built by the private real estate sector in recent years. These middle-class housing estates are shining examples of India’s development story.
However, they also give rise to practices of social exclusion, thereby imparting a poor civic education to their inhabitants. One of the ways that gated communities practice exclusion and discrimination is by refusing to rent housing to a large portion of our citizens, including Muslims, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, OBC, Northeastern state residents, sexual minorities, bachelors and single women.
unfavorable market
The main objective of the National Urban Housing and Habitat Policy formulated in 2007 is “Affordable Housing for All”, emphasizing ST, SC, ethnic minorities, backward classes and urban poor. Section 7 (7.2.1.3) of the National Urban Housing Policy 2015 discusses ‘needs-based rental housing’ (short/medium/long term) for specific target groups such as migrant workers, single women, single men, students and nationally defined Any other target group who can afford to pay monthly rent not exceeding a certain amount according to the National Building Code (NBC). However, the lived experiences of women in urban India show that this is not the case.
The rental market is especially bad for single women. Most Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) and cooperative housing associations in Indian cities have discriminatory housing rules and policies that inhibit and restrict women’s residence, mobility and freedom. Single women are often denied rental housing in middle-class housing estates by cooperative housing associations and RWAs because of their marital status. They have stated and unspoken policies about not renting out apartments to single women. Even when apartments are rented out, sometimes landlords insist on signing a lease agreement not with a female tenant but with a male guardian. Often, there is a clause in the rental agreement that forbids visits from the “opposite sex”.
There are other stipulated conditions like no nightlife of any kind, curfew etc. In addition to these formal controls, single women must endure informal and ethical policing, including scrutiny of their private lives and personal space, and unwelcome neighborly gazes. People are interested in their private lives, including the clothes they wear and the makeup they wear, their social circles, their parking skills, whether they drink alcohol, host house parties and attract male visitors, and so on. Time and time again, they were inundated with unsolicited suggestions from the head of the RWA office and other residents. This kind of policing and voyeuristic scrutiny is an understandable and accepted fact of life in these housing societies.
regressive concept
Interestingly, a person’s status, especially a woman’s marital status, determines the accessibility of spaces such as housing and other amenities, even if a person has the financial means to afford the space but is not eligible because of the checkbox social acceptance The eligibility specification for is not complete (Bhargava, R, Chilana, R 2020). It’s not surprising when we know the value and importance of a person’s marital status takes precedence over the multiple other support systems that exist in their life.
The regressive notion that a woman is “incomplete” without a cisgender man is manifested in the public sphere and clearly thrives in this day and age. As such, being an unmarried single woman in urban India is one of the most pervasive social stigmas the category has to deal with on a daily basis. The popular idea of being single, especially for women, is romanticized and viewed through the lens of a “progressive” activist movement in a patriarchal society. However, it is too easy to ignore the sociocultural and political economic context behind women’s lives. Decisions about being single are governed by a variety of factors.
patriarchal values
Additionally, the realities of caste, class, race, and minority status add layers to the already complex idea of women being single. In contemporary society, a large percentage of adults are single (Pew survey), i.e. they are not in any romantic relationship. A New York Times article titled “No Visitors, No Drinks, Home Before Age 9: Renting as a Single Woman in India” details the women’s lived experiences and their struggles to find a place to live. For Indian women, complex sociocultural and political-economic circumstances underlie their lives and decisions, and being unmarried is often an unintended consequence of other pressing life priorities (Lamb, S 2022).
On the other hand, social mentality and practices within urban enclaves are mostly oriented towards maintaining homogeneity and order. Affluent middle-class residents were constantly worried that their orderly “aesthetic” would be undermined, a “security threat”. This is why most RWAs have ridiculous rules and regulations to celebrate and promote conservative and patriarchal values. However, this also creates a culturally self-sufficient world with little diversity and pluralism, and deprives the inhabitants of a multicultural and pluralistic social world. Most importantly, it leads to poor civic education.
Therefore, to achieve the National Urban Housing and Habitat Policy, 2007 and the National Urban Housing Policy, 2015.
Furthermore, since female singleness is a stigma that is reflected in the discrimination in rental housing (Bhargava, R, Chilana, R 2020), it must be considered as one of the major barriers to accessing rental housing. To solve this problem, we need more than a concerted effort at the policy level. We also need to raise awareness of this issue through social movements and the use of the media, and encourage different forms of civic action, including dialogue with stakeholders such as RWAs and cooperative housing associations. This will help make the rental housing market inclusive and accessible to different segments of society, including single women.
