How easy is it for a transgendered person to rent a flat in Bangalore?

If you’re looking for a flat to rent in Bangalore, you are likely to visit a lot of online listings and Facebook groups. And almost all of them, invariably have tags that say “For Gents”, “For Ladies”, or “Ladies/Gents”. The gender options are almost always binary.

What happens when you are transgendered and looking for a place to stay? What happens if you don’t want to lie about your gender?

The questions bothered me for a few days, so I thought I’ll go figure it out.

The Experiment Setup

I browsed through 3 listing websites and 2 Facebook groups to pick about a hundred different leads to single occupancy houses that were marked “Ladies/Gents”. Single occupancy houses included studio apartments and 1BHKs (1 Bedroom + Hall + Kitchen).

I had taken care to select these leads from across all neighbourhoods of Bangalore. And I had picked the leads randomly using a spreadsheet randomiser.

Of these leads, 42 put me in touch with brokers and 56 put me in touch with the house owners directly. The other leads took me nowhere.

To both sets of people, I called and told the same story.

I am enquiring on behalf of a friend. They work with a reputed IT company and earn a decent, regular salary. They are single and are moving to Bangalore this month. Your rent requirement is close to their budget and they are willing to negotiate too.

[Note: I usually spoke in Hindi. So, I could easily hide behind the gender-neutral pronouns. The English “they” is a poor substitute for that.]

Invariably, one of the first questions they asked me in return was, “Gents or Ladies?”

They are transgendered, I would reply and then start penning down their response.

I did this over a period of 12 days, spending an hour a day during lunch time.

How they responded

Going through the responses today, I realised that all of them could neatly be divided into four buckets:

Totally cool: These people very clearly stated that the person’s gender didn’t matter to them at all. As long as they could work out the other details, they were fine. Would they have special terms and conditions for transgendered people? No. The terms would be same as that of any other tenant.

I’ll consider: These people weren’t immediately sure if they were okay with renting their house to a transgendered person, but they were also not willing to give an immediate rejection either. The owners wished to talk to their families and societies, while the brokers wanted to confirm with the house owners. And both owners and brokers were willing to meet with the person and discuss the matter directly with them.

I’m OK, but…: These people claimed that they personally were okay, but they knew that someone else will object. The owners said their families or societies will not give a green light, while the brokers were sure they would fall into trouble for even raising the issue with the house owners. And so, they didn’t even want to take the discussion forward.

Not welcome: These people had the most immediate reactions. And it was a straight rejection. Usually, the rejection wasn’t even polite.

Given these four kinds of responses, I categorised the last two as direct rejections.

Let’s look at the numbers

23 of 56 house owners surveyed would not even consider renting their house to a transgendered person

Among the house-owners,

13 were totally cool;
20 were willing to consider;
13 were apprehensive about what others will say; and
10 were outrightly against the idea.

That means,

23 of 56 house owners surveyed would not even consider renting their house to a transgendered person.

That’s a 41% rejection rate.

Now look at the brokers:

29 of 42 brokers surveyed wouldn’t even consider discussing with the house owner to rent it to a transgendered person

4 were totally cool;
9 were willing to discuss with the house owners;
21 were sure they will get into trouble with the owners; and
8 were outrightly against the idea.

29 of 42 brokers surveyed wouldn’t even consider discussing with the house owner to rent it to a transgendered person

That’s a 69% rejection rate.

In 7 cases of rejection, I was able to convince the brokers to put me in touch with the owners directly. Of these, in 3 cases the house owners were cool about renting their house to a trans-person.

Preliminary inferences

Now, I admit that these are just preliminary findings. And as such, these are not hard numbers to go by. Also, there are several confounding factors I haven’t controlled for.

But, having said that, the numbers do give us an idea of how the overall trends might be like. As of now, we might make the following three inferences:

1. The rejection rates are pretty high, yes, but the number of people willing to accommodate a transgendered person is also significant. That is a little encouraging.
2. If you are transgendered, you are better off contacting house owners directly. That saves you the trouble of not having to deal with the apprehensions of a second gatekeeper. The house-owners might be cool with you, even if the broker isn’t.
3. About half the brokers are unwilling to take the discussion ahead, because they are afraid they will fall into trouble and it will be a waste of time and credibility for them. This shows that more than a personal bias, they are making assumptions about the biases of the people they represent. This situation is unprecedented for them and they have never had the opportunity to talk to the owners about this aspect. And so they are choosing to err on the side of their own professional safety. [Of course, we can’t ignore that some of these people might actually be rejecting due their personal bias and are hiding behind the I-will-get-into-trouble excuse.]

So what?

If these are just preliminary findings, which colloquially translates to “these numbers don’t mean shit”, why am I even writing this article?

Well, because I see this as a conversation starter more than anything else. These numbers have given us enough cause to look into this a little deeper. That is why I want to do a formal, nation-wide research study about this.

Here are a few questions I want to look answers for:

1. How do the trends vary across different cities? And how do the trends vary across different neighbourhoods within the same city?
2. What perceptions about the transgendered community, and the LGBTQ community at large, inhibit house owners and brokers from renting them an apartment?
3. Will a broker or house owner reverse their rejection if they are offered a premium on the rent? If so, what is the price of tolerance?

I am going to pitch these findings along with a proposal to think-tanks and research groups dedicated to studying LGBTQ issues. Hopefully, someone will have the time and the resources to commission this research to me.

So, if you know someone who can help me out, please direct me to them. Also, if you have better research questions, let me know.

And, of course, it goes without saying, you can use these numbers to convince someone to give you a project too.

Do let me know what you think about these findings by leaving a response below. You can be as brutal as you want.

And if you know someone who needs to read this, do share it with them.