There’s a two bedroom basement apartment for rent in Toronto’s northwest end —one bathroom, newly painted and renovated with a side entrance. The ad, posted on popular classified site Kijiji.ca, comes with the typical caveats —no pets allowed, no smokers. And then, a less common request: Only Muslims need apply.
It’s the exact kind of specifications the Ontario Human Rights Commission recently warned landlords against putting in their online classified ads —any denial of a prospective tenant due to race, ethnic origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age and disability, among other things, is grounds for discrimination according to the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s housing policy and the Ontario Human Rights Code.
But for all its condemnation of the practice, the commission this week said they can’t police these online ads, that it’s out of their hands.
Instead, a person would have to call up the prospective landlord and file a complaint if it is clear they were not considered for the apartment because they weren’t Muslim, for example, or Chinese, Korean or Japanese as one other Craigslist Vancouver ad said it would prefer the successful tenants to be.
“If you say ‘Muslim only,’ in the law, you’d be discriminating against Buddhists, against Christians. That could be grounds for an application of the human rights code,” said Geordie Dent, executive director of the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations. Complaints about landlord discrimination regularly trickle into his office and other legal clinics in Toronto, but few are pursued because of the momentous financial and time commitment costs that come with hiring a lawyer and seeing a lengthy tribunal case.
Many such ads appear on sites specifically geared toward one community. But a search Wednesday brought up 32 results for “Muslim only” requests under the real estate category on Kijiji.ca. When contacted by the National Post, one landlord looking to rent a one bedroom apartment in Brampton, Ont., said he “does not want to give the apartment to any other people,” besides Indians or Muslims, as his ad requires. He did not have a specific reason for only wanting to rent to Indians or Muslims, nor did he deny knowing about the Ontario Human Rights Code implications. Another landlord who said in his ad for a two bedroom basement apartment in Mississauga that he would welcome Muslim families said he would also accept other tenants who were not of that faith, so long as they did not drink. The ad says nothing about prohibiting alcohol. Yet another, on Torontomuslims.com, advertises a spacious 1 bedroom apartment for a Muslim bachelor.
Pointing gun at each others' ghetto and always in a fear that if he/she could reach his home safely in the evening.
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