Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 29 – Moscow is
anything but a welcoming city as far as those seeking housing are concerned,
given that approximately a third of all landlords on the periphery of the
Russian capital now specify in their advertisements that they won’t rent to
non-Russians, and particularly people from the Caucasus and Central Asia.
To make it easier for outsiders
nonetheless to find an apartment, the HomeApp reality company has studied some
800,000 advertisements by landlords in order to identify which Moscow
neighborhoods are most hostile to outsiders and which are most welcoming (dallol.ru/news-i1322.html).
Its findings are presented on a map
on its website, homeapp.ru/ru. In reporting
this story, the Dallol portal notes that Moscow is anything but a friendly city
and that a third of the city’s landlords on the periphery as of today “openly
say that they are not prepared to rent their housing to ‘non-Russians.’”
In fact, the survey suggests that
that the real number of landlords ready to discriminate against non-Russians is
likely higher given that many of the owners have other ways to avoid renting to
non-Russians than simply declaring that in rental advertising. They may
exercise “a hidden nationalism” and give preference to ethnic Russians or offer
them better deals.
The most hospital part of the city
is inside the Garden Ring where such open declarations are “close to zero.” Slightly further out, the share saying they
won’t rent to “’persons of Caucasus nationality’” or people from Central Asia
rises to ten percent. And still further out on the periphery, the figures rise
to a quarter to a third.
In the Yeltsin period, many Russian
activists and international human rights groups were outraged by such open
discrimination against “’persons of Caucasus nationality’” and it receded into
more hidden forms. But now under Putin, such discrimination has become more
blatant and apparently acceptable as a way of doing business.
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