A House for Mr. Single

Like inflation, flight-fares, or gold – rent is structurally upward-bound. It surges, plateaus briefly; and almost never retreats. Owners cheer the ascent, true to the capitalist instinct of maximising returns on fixed assets. Tenants plead for restraint, bargain for moderation, hope for little mercies, or beg for a modest hike. 

Post-COVID urban-life has seen an unexpected exodus of working professionals. Work-from-home has severed the routine tethered to fixed office-spaces and defined office-hours – allowing sections of the service class to relocate to suburban zones. These distant habitats offer larger and cheaper housing. However, this mobility, has come at a cost: suburban real-estate values have risen sharply over the past three years, at least in the NCR.

This realignment has rewarded owners, brokers, municipalities, and suburban facilities alike. And many have, in fact, enjoyed a temporary reprieve – larger homes and comparatively lower rents than those available in the dense urban core. Yet one thing has remained unchanged, the familiar misfortune of tenants long accustomed to absorbing the shock. 

Seclude the single

Single is a dangerous category for society. They are socially ostracised, or they are denied entry outright by residents' welfare associations, or are admitted only after prolonged vetting. Even when such tenants manage to counter discrimination through income, appearance, recommendations, or influence – entry remains uncertain. Socio-economic capital may soften resistance, but it does not guarantee access.

Society has mastered the art of rewarding marriage while penalising or disciplining singlehood. Preventing single individuals from living among the ‘respectable’, ‘civilised’, and ‘well-mannered’ family units is only one form of punishment. 

The exclusion of the ‘single’ communicates a clear directive. Through this prohibition, the message is unmistakable: reproduce and internalise familial normativity. 

Self in search of a society

I have been living in one of the largest housing societies of Greater Noida for the last ten years. Back then in 2016, when I went house-hunting for the first time in a gated society, I had no idea that a housing society may require three years of my tax returns, my letter of appointment and several months of salary statement – along with several other documents – enough to assemble a conspicuously fat folder.

I had to submit a wide range of documents, as though I was purchasing property rather than renting it. Rules are rules. You abide by them, if you seek an entry. Entry is conditional upon obedience. Their logic, let alone their origins, is not meant to be interrogated. To question their logic or foundations is already to risk exclusion.

From 2001 to 2011, I lived in college and university hostels. After that, I moved to an urban village overlooking Delhi’s Southern Ridge, where the landlord cared only about the monthly cash deposit. This made the exhaustive paperwork of the ‘civilised’ housing society all the more startling – an ordeal justified in the name of organised living.

Interview, access and marriage

The broker informed me that I would have to clear a formal interview before depositing a hefty administrative fee – one that would confirm my admission. For this interview, he did not merely advise me; he instructed me that if I was even remotely interested in securing the apartment, I must not disclose my 'bachelor' status. Any mention of it would jeopardise my chances of entry. 

At the time, I was already an academic with several years of experience at a distinguished university, where I still work. Engaged in teaching and research – activities the middle classes profess to value – I was nonetheless forced to realise that renting an apartment as a single person, demanded verbal manoeuvring and strategic silence.

My designation as an academic, my income, my appearance, or even my status as a migrant in search of a habitus – none of these sufficed. The decisive criterion had little to do with professional standing or social capital. The real criterion lay elsewhere.

Moral guards

It was futile to assert that remaining unmarried was my choice, or that I opposed the institution of marriage, or even that I found it profoundly unromantic and monotonous. None of this mattered. Nothing could be more irrelevant than my political or sexual position on the marital institution in the selection interview. 

What mattered was simple: was I married or not? Marriage operated as a certificate of clean character. The unmarried, by contrast are silently constructed as sexual threats because of their supposedly undisciplined lives bordering on promiscuity, partying, drinking and other presumed amoral propensities that are possibly more polluting than Delhi’s air.

The burden of restoring the ‘moral fibre’ rests with these urban khap panchayats – clusters of retired men who sustain their relevance by policing entry and enforcing rules. One of them articulated this logic without hesitation: “Why don’t you take a few months, get married, and then reapply? We will be more than happy to consider your case after that. Akele rehna hi kyun hai? (Why stay alone at all?)”

Unpacking the logic of such prohibitions – blatantly insensitive and discriminatory – may satisfy academic curiosity, but it does not unlock rental housing. I learned this quickly. In the end, I said I would be living with my father, who would visit from Kolkata. The crisis passed. The statement, then, was not wholly false.

And again

Cut to 2025. In the intervening years, my father had passed away and the rent on my apartment had risen by more than 150%. My position on marriage remained unchanged, but I was now urgently searching for something smaller and cheaper. Everywhere I went, brokers again advised me not to disclose my single status – it would, they said with certainty, severely diminish my chances of securing a new home.

Their certainty forced me to recognise – if not fully reconcile with – the moral relegation of unmarried men, and even more so, unmarried women, and queer people who were forced to remain unmarried even if they wished to be otherwise by the laws of the land.

How deep, I wonder, is the social resentment for and fear of those who live with relative freedom, less tethered to society's set restraints.

What should ideally remain a contractual arrangement between owner and tenant is instead heavily mediated by groups of men, shaped by patriarchal assumptions about how unmarried people supposedly (dis)organise their lives. In this setting, resident welfare bodies, meant to function as service providers, arrogate to themselves extra-judicial powers of moral policing.

After living in the society for a decade, my last resort was to shift within the same complex. I assumed this would be the least problematic option, involving minimal procedures. I was mistaken. The move demanded the same tedious paperwork, now supplemented by new rules: approval from a pre-screening committee was mandatory before one could even be called for a final interview with the selection committee. My views on marriage had not changed; but society’s intolerance toward unmarried residents had only hardened.

RWA: Really Wary of Arguments

If you have read this far – and if you are not an RWA official yourself – you might reasonably ask: if the prospective tenant already lives in the same society, what is the problem in shifting to another flat within the same compound? The answer, as I have been arguing, is that this process is scarcely guided by logic. It is driven instead by a patriarchal imagination of threat from unmarried individuals. The institution of the family is hostile to certain forms of individual freedom – particularly modes of living that are uninhibited and unobligated.

Even in suburban high-rises, where isolation is extreme and where a sense of solidarity barely exists, membership rules reveal our bias toward heteronormative living.

So I said, “Sir, I’ve lived here peacefully for 10 years. No one has ever objected to my lifestyle or conduct. Shouldn’t that count more than my marital status when considering my internal transfer?” The reply was predictable: “Rules are rules, beta. How can we justify an exception, just for you?” I still wonder how the same unmarried person (me) becomes a greater threat after moving to another flat in the same premise, and how staying put somehow makes me less of one.

Arreh… single ko de diya!

It took weeks of uncertainty and negotiations to finally close the deal. But this story is not about me securing a flat. It’s about the discriminatory procedures that make urban living fundamentally undemocratic. And if it is this hard for a fairly privileged professional, imagine how it must be for others.

At the final step, after pocketing the shifting fee, the clerk skimmed the form and the committee’s notes and couldn’t resist his shock: “Arreh… single ko de diya (Oh! They gave it to an unmarried person!)"

Sreedeep Bhattacharya is a sociologist with Shiv Nadar University. He is the author of Consumerist Encounters: Flirting with Things and Images.

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