Manchester PhD student subject to racial abuse whilst looking for housing on SpareRoom

A PhD student in Manchester claims she was subjected to racial discrimination whilst looking for accommodation in the city.

Bulbul gave details of an email exchange between herself and allegedly a prospective landlord to a research campaign looking at rental discrimination.

The 29-year-old student said she was “completely shattered” by the exchange after she enquired about a two bedroom house on SpareRoom.

In comments given to The Independent, PhD student Bulbul explains that she had been looking for accommodation for her second year of university when the incident occurred.

The email shown in the report, believed to be from the landlord of the property, states that the landlord had “very bad experiences with students/professionals from the Indian subcontinent”.

It continued to say “they lie too much, practise deceit, they are filthy not dirty, opportunists, irresponsible, abscond without paying dues and generally they are poor pay masters”.

Bulbul told The Independent that the interaction left her “completely shattered”, continuing “I lost faith in the housing system in the UK. I thought I am going to be discriminated against like this over and over again.

“I have never received this kind of treatment from anybody in the UK, or anybody in the world.”

She had been searching for properties in the Hulme area, but subsequently resigned herself to continuing her stay in university accommodation.

Bulbul stated that she feared reporting the email to the police, as she was unsure how this may affect her UK visa.

The report, published by Generation Rent, found disproportionate levels of discrimination towards minority ethnic groups renting in the UK, including international students.

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Findings in the report also reveal that minority ethnic respondents were 19 per cent more likely to have struggled to find a landlord to rent to them as a younger person, and 18 per cent of the total surveyed had experienced discrimination from a letting agent. This number rises to 28 per cent from landlords.

Generation Rent surveyed 145 renters between the ages of 18 and 29 in total.

The report found that minority ethnic renters were also 30 per cent more likely to have faced an unaffordable rent increase, with Manchester ranking fourth highest for rent increases between 2023 and 2024. Average rent in the city surged from £1,054 per person per month to £1,184.

In numerous posts to the Facebook group, Manchester Student Group, various student renters detailed their experiences with private landlords and letting agents.

Accused landlords are said to enter homes without notice, refuse to fix household issues and say “outrageous things in passing”, said to be misogynistic and racist.

The report published by generation rent found that minority ethnic responders were 17 per cent more likely to report that landlords had not addressed maintenance issues, and they were more likely to report landlords coming into the property when they shouldn’t.

Lucy*, an international student, told The Tab Manchester that when looking for housing they “didn’t really have anyone in my corner who could really understand my situation. That extends to my landlords as well, they just assumed that all of us were in the same situation”.

Student renters are usually required to provide at least one UK based guarantor to pass affordability checks, isolating those with families abroad.

Lucy added that she felt “cornered” when asked to provide a guarantor, as their housemates and letting agents “didn’t really have any sympathy for my situation.”

She continued: “I didn’t realise how different our situations could be. That they set up direct debits that match up with student loans coming in.”

Without a UK guarantor, students are left to chose between paying the years rent upfront, or paying private companies to act as a guarantor.

The Manchester Tab heard that some international students feel a lack of support from Manchester universities, with one student explaining that information could be more readily available.

They said: “I wish it was information like this that the university supplied more easily, or offered international students more support with this sort of thing.

“It can be a really scary feeling, thinking that no landlords are going to rent out to you, just because you don’t have the same support system as home students.”

Matt Hutchinson, director of SpareRoom, said: “It’s illegal for anyone renting property in any form to discriminate based on race or nationality and we take a zero tolerance approach. Finding somewhere to rent in today’s climate is hard enough without having to deal with discrimination too.”