A Manchester PhD student has received a racist email after enquiring about accommodation on SpareRoom.com
The student received the email from the host of the two-bedroom house in Hulme after enquiring about the accommodation.
The unnamed landlord said that they would not accept a tenant “from the Indian subcontinent” because they “lie too much”, are “filthy”, and “abscond without paying dues”.
The host wrote: “I have stopped taking Indian students for quite a while now”. The host also claimed that the majority of landlords didn’t rent to “people from the subcontinent” or asked for additional rent upfront if they did.
The student told The Independent: “I have never received this kind of treatment from anybody in the UK, or anybody in the world”. She also said that she was worried reporting the incident to the police might affect her visa.
She said: “I thought, ‘I am going to be discriminated against like this over and over again’”.
Reports of the incident came to light in campaign group Generation Rent’s research into the experiences of ethnic minority renters in the UK.
Their research found that 38% of ethnic minority renters had experienced rude or hostile behaviour from a landlord or letting agent, compared to 32% of white respondents.
Generation Rent’s research also highlighted rising rents in areas with high numbers of ethnic minority renters. The campaign group found that rent in Manchester had increased by 12.3% between 2023 and 2024.
Generation Rent’s research coincided with The Mancunion’s reports that new student halls in Fallowfield could cost as much as £235 per week.
These reports also follow findings from the National Union of Students that 84% of student renters have experienced issues with their accommodation, primarily across three categories of search, experience, and costs.
The survey of 3163 students in the 2024 autumn term found that international students faced particular difficulty in finding housing given the requirements for UK guarantors.
The Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s Good Landlord Charter can be accessed here.
Director of SpareRoom, Matt Hutchinson, told The Mancunion:
“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”.
“In this particular case, the email exchange took place away from our platform and the incident was not reported to us. We take discrimination extremely seriously and we will always take action to close the accounts of anyone who breaks the law, and take steps to prevent them from ever returning to our platform”.
“We always recommend that users communicate within our messaging system so we’re better able to keep them safe online. We have a system in place that scans messages for certain language, and we investigate when it flags anything. Offensive behaviour should be reported, whether it happens in our systems or not – we always investigate every single report”.
If you have experienced similar issues with renting whilst as a student in Manchester, please get in touch with
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