Sunday, September 5, 2010

SWF seeking...?

I was thinking of moving to the city, but it's just really expensive to live there. (I mean, it's worth the money, but it's still a lot of money.) So I went on one of those roommate finder websites to see if I could find some cool people to live with - and more importantly split rent with!

I had never done an online roommate search so I wasn't exactly prepared for all the questions they were going to ask me about myself and my potential roommates. I expected the basics like smoker or non-smoker, but you can actually search by age, gender, sexual orientation, profession (choices include student, professional, retired or 'others'), and whether you have a pet or a child.*

That surprised me, because I thought you weren't allowed to ask questions like that (something about the Fair Housing Act not letting you discriminate). It's not a DATING site! Although there is the option to choose 'not disclosed' (for yourself) or 'doesn't matter' (for your potential roommates) on certain questions, some of it still seemed a little weird to me. but I guess because it's optional and since the goal of the sites are to bring togethe potential roommates and not necessarily tenants/landlords, then it might be a grey area.


I know that the federal law does not include sexual orientation, but many states - including New York - do protect against this kind of discrimination...  so I'm not completely sure what makes it okay to ask for this information on a website for roommates. Maybe because it's optional? Maybe because websites are protected as Internet 'forums'? I don't know.

But it all makes me wonder...

If you're going to live with someone, I guess there are some reasons why you'd want to know personal kinds of information about a potential roommate... If you have a young child, you might not want to live with a college student who parties all night long. (Or, if you're someone who parties all night long, you might not want to live with someone who has a young child.) Or if you're in a long distance relationship, your signficant other might get jealous if you were living with someone you could possibly be romantically become entangled with... so in that case the gender and sexual orientation of your potential roommates might actually matter.

I also know that certain religions don't allow living with members of the opposite sex (even if it's platonic) so it wouldn't necessarily be discrimination based on gender if you didn't want to share a bedroom or bathroom with someone who isn't your gender.

While technically it would be discrimination if someone specified "I want a straight, white roommate", it's not exactly the same as discriminating against a potential employee. It's more like "I'm a racist homophobic bigot and you don't want to live with me anyway." (And that wouldn't just apply to gay people either; I'm straight and white, but I wouldn't want to live with a racist homophobic bigot either!)

And theoretically, if you're welcoming a roommate into your home... you should have a right to be somewhat discerning about who you live with. It's not a public space.  Who you live with is a personal choice. It seems shitty to say it, but I don't want to live with someone if I disagree with their 'morals' (or really, if they would disagree with mine... or my lack thereof). But then... there's so much that goes into sharing a living space with someone. I wouldn't want to live with someone who eats lots of tuna fish or does drugs or never bathes or snores or breeds cats or listens to Celine Dion all day. I wish there was a website that would help me find a roommate using search criteria like that!

But when it comes to sexual orientation, I don't care who they're sleeping with as long as they do it in their room and not on the kitchen table where I eat breakfast!

*Information on search criteria came from RoommateClick.com and EasyRoommate.com which are the only two sites I checked out. I can't speak for any other sites.

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