Marcel Winatschek

What You’ll Rent To

Saw a roommate listing in Frankfurt where some guy had just laid out his criteria. No Arabs. No Africans. No political science majors because they were left-leaning leeches—his exact words. Not that he was trying to hide what he meant.

What got me wasn’t the bigotry. It’s that he didn’t bother with code language or plausible deniability. Just posted it plain. Natural light, own bathroom, and also: you are not welcome here. No apology baked in. Just straight rejection.

I kept thinking about who would see that and apply anyway. People who know they’re not wanted. Who need the place enough to walk into it anyway. That specific kind of quiet damage.

Didn’t follow up. But it stayed with me somehow—the casual way he’d just posted his contempt like that, apparently saw nothing wrong with it. As if being honest about your prejudice was some kind of excuse for it.