Dear landlords: don’t discriminate us because we’re a house of guys

It’s blatant, untackled sexism

landlords selly oak student student housing the tab the tab birmingham the tab brum university of birmingham UoB

It’s that time of year again. The house hunt is on and thousands of students are looking for housing to accommodate them in their next year at university.

With ease, guys and girls looking to share a house together find one. Without a hitch, seven girls find a seven-bedroom house to live in. But when it’s a house of guys in question, men have been stereotyped to be unhygienic, unhealthy and messy partygoers with no ability to shower, cook or clean up after themselves. This is simply not the case.

addtext_com_mtg1nzu2oty1nti

Recently a group of third year students looking for fourth year accommodation showed up to their scheduled house viewing. Upon arrival, the landlord sees that they are a group of six men and turns them away.

The Tab spoke to one of the students who said, “The landlord demanded to know if we smoked and if we threw many parties. We genuinely thought he was joking but obviously answered no. He said that he wouldn’t bother and told us to tell the estate agents to not send any more groups of guys his way. He then got into his car and drove away. We were just so shocked that we didn’t know what to say.”

lol

The group of students who were turned away

If you type in on Google ‘living in an all male house’, the first hit is an article named ‘16 Things Girls Can Expect Living in a House Full of Males’. Within this article are comments such as “each one of their rooms looks and smells worse than the next”, “your food is never safe” and lastly that “a house full of soccer players is not ideal unless you enjoy the smell of wet, sweaty clothes mixed with a faint hint of lynx”.

Not only are these comments a sweeping generalisation as to how all guys act, but it also remarks on the stereotypes that are deep-seated in our society. As a woman writing this article, women can be messy partygoers, smokers, unhygienic and unhealthy too. Women can play sport and come back with sweaty, smelly gear and women can’t always cook either. There is nothing wrong with a sporty woman who doesn’t live to cook and clean so why are there suddenly assumptions made about men who are acting exactly the same?

So, landlords, don’t turn men away from your houses and refuse to give them the accommodation they need because your perception of a ‘house of guys’ is clouded by the stereotypes and sweeping generalisations that are engrained within society, which ultimately, need to change.