This is going to be a touchy subject for many, but one that I realize we do not talk about enough in our industry. Today I experienced for the first time in this industry, racism towards me in front of a room full of people. I did not know how to handle it and it took all the strength I had to not cry or go off on the resident. No one ever trained me to know what to do when a resident is racist towards you! I was trained on what to do when a co-worker or a vendor is rude or racist. What was even more embarrassing was the fact that I was the only one of my race in the room and the others were either speechless or giggling about what was being said.
So what do we do when this happens to us? Do we ignore it or address the issue right away? Would it even matter to the resident? I chose to calmly ask the resident to please leave my office. I was told that I was denying them their right of freedom of speech. They did have the right of freedom of speech but not in front potential residents. This only added fuel to the fire and after several minutes of telling them to leave, they finally did. I turn around to see the astonished looks on my leasing specialist’s and the applicant faces. I noticed that two prospects were giggling about the whole thing. I apologized to everyone that they had to hear that and then headed outside to pound on the doors of delinquent residents with my new leasing specialist in tow.
The feeling I had of shame and anger was new to me and I did not know how to handle it. My ancestors were Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland
While I had my new leasing specialist with me I explained to him that the residents would treat me in a completely different way than they would him. True to my statement only 10 doors into my collection efforts I was given attitude and then when they noticed him they started to smile and actually were being nice. In the past when this behavior would happen I would tell myself that it had nothing to do with my race but had to do with my title of Assistant Manager aka the Rent Collector. But after the incident in my office and seeing what was happening while knocking on doors I no longer think this way. This made me angry and sad at the same time.
I know I have lived a somewhat sheltered life growing up and was taught to love one another as you would want them to love you. But what happen to this part of the world that I find myself in that is only 25 miles from where I started my multifamily career in. Did they not pay attention in school about the results of being raciest? Were they taught as children to automatically hate those who were different than they were?
I wonder who protects the property managers, assistant managers, leasing specialist and maintenance teams from raciest residents. How do we deal with the hurt of having horrible raciest things said to us by our residents? This has really bothered me today and I wanted to know what do we do about this? Our residents have fair housing set up to protect them but what about us, what do we have?
Professionally edited by Gerry Hunt
