Categories:
Discrimination
Case Study
You move to B.C. ahead of your wife and son. You are white and your wife is South Asian. You see an apartment you like and tell the landlord your wife and child will be joining you in B.C. soon. The landlord says she is glad to be renting to a young family. You move in and everything is going smoothly. Your family joins you a few months later. Once your wife and son arrive, the landlord starts to bring up problems almost every day. For example, the landlord changes the date your rent is due and then is upset that you didn’t pay the rent on time. She is angry because your son left a bike outside your apartment door. The landlord says it endangered the lives of everyone living in the building. When your washing machine breaks, you ask the landlord to fix it. She gets annoyed and doesn’t fix it for two months. You don’t understand what changed and go to talk to the landlord. Amongst other things, she says “I would never have rented to you if I knew your wife was from India.”
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Are you experiencing discrimination?
Yes. Place of origin, ancestry and race are protected by the Code. Your landlord is creating a type of harmful living environment, also called a toxic or poisoned environment, when she changes the terms of the rental agreement by changing the date rent is due, gets upset about problems that are easily resolved and doesn’t address repairs. Your landlord connects the harm you are experiencing to your wife’s place of origin, saying she wouldn’t have rented to you if she had known that your wife was South Asian.