If you are an unmarried man or woman, acquiring a rental house is harder because some landlords want nothing to do with you, writes ALLAN OLINGO

When Maureen Akinyi, 27, completed college few years ago and got a job with a company in Kisumu last year, she left for her new workplace bubbling with excitement.

In her mind, she knew Kisumu was the third largest city in Kenya and finding accommodation would be a walk in the park.

So she put up with her uncle for what she assumed would be a brief period as she went around looking for a house.

“I wanted a decent house going for between between Sh11,000 and Sh13,000 a month. I was told those were available and sure enough, I got many of them,” she says.

Husband

But much as Akinyi got good houses and was ready to pay, no landlord was willing to accommodate her for the weirdest of reasons: She was a single woman.

Whenever she found a house she liked, the first question from the landlady or landlord was, “Are you married?”

Akinyi recalls a landlord in Nyalenda Estate, Kisumu, telling her she was not qualified to stay in his plot because she not only had to be married but also had to prove that the man she presented was her “real husband”.

In fact, Pamela Wanjiku, another single young woman, only secured a rental house at Brilliant Estate in the same town after presenting an uncle with whom they shared a surname to the landlord as her husband.

But why this sort of discrimination against unmarried women?

Some landlords who spoke to Crazy Monday are unapologetic, saying some unmarried women are a headache to manage because they drink heavily and come late at night, causing commotions in the plot.

Alfred Onyango, 40, a landlord in Kisumu, says, “A normal married woman is bound to be respectful.

She will not drink and come back to the house in the wee hours of the morning.”

Criminal

He says sometimes, single women are twilight girls who go to the streets at night and even involve themselves in criminal activities.

“Imagine an ‘old woman’ who is 30 coming to you and insisting that she is not yet married. What has she been doing? We fear them! You can’t even know whether she is kept by a gangster,” adds Onyango.

But Margaret Makori, a landlady in Kisii’s Nyanchwa Estate, says the whole thing affects both single men and women.

She says she can’t allow them to rent her houses because some single people have broken homes on the plots where they live.

“Unless all tenants are single men and women, mixing unmarried people with those who are married is recipe for disaster. They will bring problems,” she warns.

Mrs Makori says that some single men end up having affairs with fellow tenants’ wives, house girls, landlords’ daughters and, in some cases, even landlords’ wives.

“We have seen many such cases. Sometimes they will have affairs with a neighbour and the house girl, or even two female neighbours. Such things cause unnecessary tension, even fights, in the plot. You can’t trust single men,” says Mrs Makori.

She recalls a case where a single man who resided on the second floor of a flat started having a fling with a married woman on the third floor.

“She would sneak into his house first on her way from work and spend as much as two hours with him before going to her house. When her husband discovered, he almost torched the house,” she recalls.

Roney Otieno, 38, lends credence to her views , admitting it happened to him when he was staying in Kawangware Estate in Nairobi where he stayed in the same plot with his landlord.

“I met a beautiful young woman whom I assumed was one of the tenants. I made advances and she gave in. I only realised I was moving with the landlord’s second wife when it was too late. I had to leave the plot when the watchman tipped him off,” he recalls.

That aside, many landlords view single men as noisy wrecks who disturb the peace and don’t respect other tenants.

Martin Kurgat, who is in his early 50s, says a young neighbour who would “sit bare chest on a stool outside his house, forgetting that I had a wife and teenage daughters”, particularly ticked him off.

Kurgat adds that if the young man was not holding loud drunken parties deep into the night, he had a string of different women popping in and out, much to the embarrassment of neighbours with teenage children.

It was also not uncommon for his girlfriends to ‘collide’ in his house leading to loud brawls, shrieks and lewd insults at odd hours of the day and night.

As a result, most landlords prefer family men or women who are viewed as stable, mature and responsible.

Eunice Amondi, a landlady in Kisumu’s Kaloleni Estate, is particularly set against unmarried female tenants saying “some are husband snatchers”.

“You have to be careful with them. They can ‘steal’ your husband even if you are the landlady. You might be surprised to realise your tenant is a co-wife enjoying rent-free accommodation,” she adds amid laughter.

Rent

Another problem that has been cited by plot owners as to why they don’t want single tenants is rent payment.

They argue that some single men and women disappear without clearing rent since it only takes them few hours to pack their property and leave.

In fact, there are many single tenants whose household goods can fit on a handcart. They only need minutes to pack and go.

Peter Owuor, 45, says two years ago, a tenant vanished from his Kisumu house with rent arrears in that manner while he was on his way from Kakamega to collect it.

“Most of these single people have few things in the house and they make decisions very fast. For married people, they have to consult each other first. They also need more time to move because they have school-going children. But a single man or woman can carry a bag and even leave the bedding behind when rent becomes too much and you are harassing them to pay up,” he says.

Ken Omululu of Nairobi, however, says it is not proper to deny single people opportunities for accommodation, saying, even married couples can be bad tenants. “I once had neighbours who were a nuisance although they were a married couple.

 The man always staggered in late, woke up everyone because of the loud music in his car and by hooting and banging on the gate.

Once he got into his house, the wife would engage him in a shouting match that would go on for hours, disturbing everyone on the plot.

We lost count of the number of times he threw his wife and children out at midnight, or she refused to open the door for him,” says Omululu.

But while such stories are commonplace, race is also an issue of discrimination where landlords are concerned.

Some Indian landlords who wish to rent out guesthouses within their homes make it clear that they only welcome young single Indian women for reasons that are not clear.

Meanwhile, although many Kenyan landlords won’t mention it, they are never comfortable with certain foreign tenants or university students saying they move in with the whole clan and strain facilities.

“It is not impossible to find 16 people sharing a two-bedroomed house. That is a big strain on water and electricity, especially if the metres are communal. It also means you incur heavy costs draining septic tanks” one landlord who did not wish to be named said.