Assignment 1: Lording Landlords

 

Focus: (1) Weird behaviour (2) Being unreasonable (3) Having to live with such behaviour.

Assignment 1

Stepping into the bathroom of my rental flat, something was amiss. A fresh set of clothes in hand, I turned to face the shower area on my right, only to see Chinese spinach lying limply on the drainage cover just beneath the shower. There were four leaves in total, messily arranged. The huge green leaves obscured the drainage from view and glistened with droplets. Unfortunately, the human brain is highly integrative – I now associated the humid air and swooshing sounds of the water pipes in the bathroom with the crunch and juiciness of the “mouth-watering” vegetables I saw. 

I stood rooted at the entrance, surveying the “crime scene”. Opposite the door was the toilet bowl. Right beside it was a large red pail, the type which people use to wash their cars with. A trail of soil led from the mouth of the pail to the shower area. Between the shower area and the pail was a garden hose frequently used for cleaning, as it has water with higher pressure. Water still dripped from the end of the hose. Clearly, it was recently used, and that leaky faucet has yet to be fixed by my landlord.

An elementary deduction – the culprit used the high-pressure garden hose, washed off soil from Chinese spinach in a large red pail (beside a toilet bowl?), then drained the excess water by flicking it towards the shower area, which explains the trail of soil. They then kicked the vegetable remains towards the drainage cover.

Why wash the vegetables in the toilet when the kitchen is right outside? In what culture is this normal? Taking a few steps back in shock, I found a spineless reptile on the couch scrolling her phone. My landlady frowned, annoyed, as I urged Her Highness to survey the loo.

“What? It’s just vegetables. Just pick it up lah,” she said matter-of-factly, overlooking the oddness of this behaviour, and that in fact, it was not my business to pick up after their family. I refused to move and the quinquagenarian bent down to remove the offensive leaves, not without rolling her eyes and giving a slight shrug. “Oh, it must be the father,” she said with a sigh, shifting the blame with ease and evidently thinking I was too dramatic.

Living together with a stranger is hard, whether it is accepting another’s appalling hygiene standards or attitude. In my case, the landlords are inconsiderate, rude and expect others to clean up after them. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon. Other friends who rent also met landlords who feel entitled to behave unreasonably. For example, some enter the tenants’ rooms when they aren’t in, or compulsively restrict electricity and air-conditioner usage though it is included in the bills. A Chinese scholar even noted that her aged landlady in Queenstown once set up a string to trip another tenant at night for reasons unknown.

Unreasonable landlords affect many. There are 1.47 million non-residents in Singapore. (National Population and Talent Division, 2021). Approximately half would probably have to rent[1]. Also, rental prices rose by 27% in 2022 (Jacob, 2023). Tenants who are on a budget now have no choice but to put up with such problematic behaviour. This leads us to the question, “Why do Singaporean landlords feel entitled to behave unreasonably?”                                                   548 words

References

Jacob, C. (2023, April 12). Singapore rent prices are still sky-high. Long-time expats are having to consider drastic changes. Consumer News and Business Channel (CNBC). https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/13/singapore-rent-prices-are-soaring-what-this-means-for-expats.html

National Population and Talent Division. (2021). Population in brief 2021.

 

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[1] There is no statistic on the number of people renting rooms in Singapore, whether in condominiums or in public housing (also known as HDBs). In the “Population in brief” published by the National Population and Talent Division (2021), the 1.47 million non-resident population comprises: Employment Pass Holders (11%), S Pass Holders (11%), Non-CMP Work Permit Holder (19%), Dependants of Citizens, PRs, Work Pass Holders (18%), Students (4%), CMP Work Permit Holders (20%) and Migrant Domestic Workers (16%). Of this, only CMP Work Permit Holders (those from the Construction, Marine shipyard and Process sectors), as well as Migrant Domestic Workers, are known to have dormitories or live in with their employers. A safe estimate is thus that half of 1.47 million might have to rent.