A Flat of My Own: Singlehood and Rental Housing

Abstract

Urban ecology often addresses issues of how to make cities more liveable and sustainable, unravelling the dynamics that are located within the space that it seeks to establish. One such dynamics can be found within the domain of rental housing where one’s identity plays a significant role in access to these spaces. There are many studies that have addressed this issue of discrimination based on different aspects of one’s identity, but very few have foregrounded the predicament of single tenants within the age group of 25–40 years, who have migrated to metropolitan cities. Using Lefebvre’s three-pronged strategy to understand the social nature of space and the spatial nature of the society, we begin with the contention that rental housing is not only a geographical space but also a social space. This paper also looks at what de Certeau calls “ways of operating” by looking at the spatial practice and representational spaces occupied by these women and men where “singlehood” emerges as a significant variable affecting one’s chances of accessing certain kinds of rental housing and once this access is established, the negotiations that happen thereafter.