Another case of no homework from the media

Stuff reports:

A single mum from Tauranga still can’t find a place to call home, despite applying for more than 130 rentals.

A reader writes in:

Stuff/ SunLive from the Bay of Plenty covers the story of a young solo mum’s frustration at not being able to find a rental property, with properties becoming unavailable for unknown reasons after she was shown the flat.

It’s especially saddening because the young lady is a solo mum, and obviously would like to give her baby boy a better chance at life instead of living in a spare room at her parent’s place.

It all seems very strange that she is getting short shrift, and the media can’t seem to shed any light on the reason why she isn’t getting very far with landlords.

But a quick amount of homework, the kind a landlord might do, shows us that the young mum’s Facebook page has photos of a person who looks like her standing next to a motorcycle gang member (judging by the patches, the gang is The Greazy Dogs, located in the BOP)

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10155806733671493&set=pb.672431492.-2207520000..&type=3

Now, maybe that photo isn’t the young woman, and maybe the photo is random and the people in the photo are unknown to her, but it’s perhaps not wise to post random photos of patched gang members on your Facebook page if you are looking to get hired for a job, or looking to put your best foot forward with a landlord.

It would also be unwise to suggest landlords could be bigoted against solo mums when maybe they are more worried about people having gang connections.

So could the media please do some basic homework when a sob story comes in the door complaining about how hard it is to rent a property?

It does seem common sense not to have photos of gang members on your social media, if you are trying to rent a flat.

I hope she is successful at finding a flat soon.