What Should I Do About My Bigoted Landlady?

I wish I could report her.

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My partner and I live in a rent-controlled apartment in a neighborhood we love and for which we pay well below market value. One drawback is that our landlady lives in our building. For the most part, the less-than-desirable things about her are basically standard landlady grievances and petty annoyances. But over the years we have come to believe that she harbors significant racial and gender biases.

When units in our building come up for rent, she often asks my partner (and by proxy, me, although she never engages me directly due to her sexism) to recommend friends, and over the years a number of our friends have lived here. I value being able to extend what really is an extremely good financial deal to friends who would really benefit from it, but am deeply uncomfortable about the fact that, in doing so, I am enabling her racism and sexism.

Is there an ethical solution here? I wish I could report her to some sort of city housing authority (we are in Los Angeles), but I doubt I have any legal recourse as I’m not an aggrieved party and my belief in her biases is based on casual observations and overheard comments. I can’t point to a particular incident. I feel guilty for not wanting to recommend the place, as I know so many friends who could use the financial break, but I also feel like it’s harder and harder to justify “helping” her in any way.

Read the Ethicist’s response here.

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