Ethnicity should not be a criterion for renting a housing unit

The Consumers’ Association of Penang (CAP) calls on the government to investigate into the recent case of a Libyan expatriate who was not allowed to rent a condominium unit in the Cyberjaya neighbourhood. The management of property had barred Africans from renting any unit there.

Malaysia needs to seriously reflect how it can allow such explicit racism manifest in our multiethnic and multi religious society. In fact, the ethnicity of a person is not the sole determining factor of the person’s character.

The unit rental or sale of a housing unit is a private deal between the unit owner and the prospective tenant. A management of the property cannot impose any ruling on a unit owner, forbidding him to rent his unit to a potential tenant basing on the tenant’s racial identity.

Anyway, for any strata property, all unit owners are bound by covenants, by-laws, rules and other conditions. Therefore, if a resident seriously violates the property management’s rules and regulations, the unit owner can be informed to take an appropriate action such as terminating the contract of the tenant.

We would like to reiterate our call to the government to investigate into the banning of certain ethnic groups from renting housing units. Such ban along racial lines unjustly characterised an entire ethnic group in a negative manner.

Press Statement, 14 July 2020