Landlord Reveals He Doesn’t Lease to Android Users, Internet Freaks Out: “The Lawsuit on This”
"All of the people that we evicted were using Androids and we just didn't want them anymore."
Jul. 3 2024, Published 2:02 p.m. ET
Stand-up comic Opey said that he gets discriminated again more for having an Android phone than he does for being Black, joking that non-iOS users are the "most discriminated" against group in America.
In fact, there are even some people who say they will outright refuse to date someone who doesn't have an iPhone, probably because they can't stand seeing the green bubble.
Now look, we could go into the polemics of how the green bubble phenomenon is actually Apple's fault and that the software giant could easily adopt RCS messaging and make everyone's response bubbles blue if it wanted.
We could even go into how the Department of Justice has accused the Cupertino tech giant of propagating racism with the green bubble phenomenon.
However, for this landlord featured in a viral TikTok posted by Gana (@m.gana_jr), his problem with Android users is rooted in eviction statistics. He says that after looking at the eviction statistics of their units, he noticed a recurring trend among the folks who were kicked out for presumably being bad tenants and not paying their rent on time.
That trend? They were almost all Android users. He went on to state that while there were indeed "outliers" when it came to some tenants (i.e., there were some folks who rocked the Google-made operating system on their handsets who were great tenants), he ultimately decided to just save himself the headache of having to deal with any potential problems down the line.
The solution to that? Starting in November of 2023, his leasing office would outright refuse to rent apartments to any new applicant who happened to have an Android phone.
Check out his conversation in the TikTok snippet below:
"We also don't rent to any Android users," the shades-rocking landlord says as he speaks into the camera. "Only iPhone users in my portfolio," he explains to someone interviewing him who asks the property owner to explain his reasoning for this stipulation.
"So last year we did an analysis on all the evictions and we realized that the vast majority of evictions come as a result of Android userships. All of them ... all of the people that we evicted were using Androids and we just didn't want them anymore," he says as the person sitting across from him starts cracking up.
The landlord explained further, "So once their lease came up, assuming they weren't a good tenant — 'cause of course, occasionally you do have the outlier — but all new tenants moving, starting in November of 2023, are all iPhone users. We do not accept Android users."
The landlord's reasoning didn't seem to sit right with numerous TikTokers who replied to Gana's video. There was one person, an Android user, who said that they thought the landlord's discriminatory attitude toward Google-OS sporting potential tenants was probably ill-conceived.
"I check my 820 credit score on my Android," they wrote, something that Gana replied was a "flex."
Someone else thought the landlord may've shot himself in the foot, legally speaking, with this bit of video evidence for anyone who wanted to say that they were discriminated against for not getting approved to live in his building: "The lawsuit on this is a sure win with this clip lol."
Numerous other folks thought he just landed himself in a big heaping pile of trouble for these comments as well: "Him admitting this and not realizing it’s a form of discrimination is wild," one wrote.
Another replied: "Bro just got himself a huge lawsuit."
And someone else thought that the landlord was obviously mistaken in his assessment of prospective tenants: "Correlation does not equal causation."
Gana replied to that comment too, indicating that while the guy's method for deciding/weeding out prospective tenants may seem unconventional and discriminatory, it was definitely working for him monetarily because they were holding their conversation on a pricey boat: "Yeah dude trippin. But is he? idk he’s on a 5 million dollar yacht."
But there were people who stated that just because someone has an iPhone doesn't necessarily mean they're financially responsible: "I do eviction cleanouts, the amount of iPhones we find."
Someone else replied: "Funny, I'm the Android user (S23U) and have to pay the bills for the three iPhone users in my house."
Another TikToker remarked: "Most of my poorest customers have new iPhones."
What do you think? Is the landlord wrong for making this judgment against prospective tenants? Or is this data that he gathered for his particular business and, since it's rooted in his own experience, it's difficult to really argue against it because, as Gana says, it's clearly working for him?