A few months back the apartment I live in was sold. With me in it.
Honestly, that in itself sounded weird to me already, but apparently it’s what real estate moguls do. They buy and sell housing blocks with the tenants still in them from one useless prick to the other.
Yeah, you may catch on right now that your dear friend Morb isn’t exactly a fan of landlords. In general I feel like the ownership of land is a problematic thing, but in the case of landlords, especially commercial ones, I feel there’s a special hell reserved just for them.
Anyway, my anti-capitalist views aren’t exactly relevant for this specific tale. The fact that my landlords changed is.
The landlord change happened around the same time as me getting my gender marker amended in my passport. And despite having told my old landlord about the change (and if they could stop sending mail to Ms. Morb and just send it to Mx Morb, or even better, Morb) it seems that the information of who lives in the apartment the new landlord bought didn’t land with their administration.
So, time to dust off the old email and send the new landlord leech an email requesting them to change my details. My Names changed and I’d appreciate it if they’d remove any and all gender references, since they’re irrelevant.
The admin department of the new landlord emailed me back, telling me that they would need proof of identity. Which I think is sort of fair, so I sent them a copy of my passport, with the irrelevant or sensitive details blacked out (this is a pretty normal thing to do in the Netherlands when you’re sending your shit over the intertubes).
I then got an email back, that they couldn’t change my gender in the system because they only have two options (male/female). I suspect this response will be coming back often in this blog…
And as to my names: the admin person told me I would have to supply them with proof of my old and my new name, when it changed and WHY it changed. I reiterated that they have a copy of my old passport (with my deadnames) and they now have a copy of the new one. For ease, I said they could use the date the passport was issued as the date of change.
The reply I got was less than 2 sentences and roughly translated: “We also need to know why you changed your name and who green lit the change.”
You’d think that me changing my gender marker on my passport and birth certificate would give away any and all reasons of the change, but apparently, admin missed the logical reasoning episode of Sesame Street. I wish them a lot of luck solving any Resident Evil puzzles in the future…
Now, I went for the ‘nuke it from orbit’ option when they amended my birth certificate, so no records of my deadname are in existence, save for a few stray envelopes. If you check the municipal birth records, Morb has always been called Morb, and has always had gender X.
So I asked the admin person what they expected me to send them, and their reply was a bit baffling. Basically they wanted me to send them the official court decision that was made regarding the changes, including all the supporting evidence (ie: an essay I had to write about my gender experience, and any statements medical professionals might have made on my case).
I think the fuck not.
I contacted the Renting Union (Woonbond) to ask them if I had to give these people more than just my passport. And I was told they technically weren’t even allowed to demand a copy of my passport, since the rental agreement was made with me (in 2009) and the social security numbers haven’t changed.
As the kind lady on the phone told me “Whenever you renew your passport, you don’t send copies of the new one to your bank or landlord either, so in this case, it isn’t applicable either. They should just change the things you requested without asking for ‘proof’. As long as the main tenant doesn’t change (it doesn’t) there is nothing relevant for them about your name or gender changes.”
Officially in the Netherlands, a (commercial) landlord isn’t allowed to demand a copy of your identification, your social security number, or hell, even your phone number. Not until the contract for housing is signed, and the requests for this info are explicitly mentioned in the contract you’re signing. If a contract states that you need to give them these details, and you sign it, then yes, you do. But until you’ve signed, it’s none of their business.
It’s a request that you, as a renter, need to agree to in order for it to be valid. And it’s up to you how badly you want to live somewhere to decide if you do or do not provide them with the info.
Nice detail: they are legally not allowed to demand your payslips or any income details. They can request these things before they decide to let you rent their hovel, but they don’t have any legal grounds to demand these. Now, no one is going to rent out a property to people if they don’t know if they can afford it, so it’s logical they ask it, but, in theory, you don’t have to give it.
I copied all of this information down into an email, and kindly told the landlord that all he was getting was that redacted copy of my passport, and that I would no longer reply to any messages sent to Ms or Mrs Morb.
I have not heard back from them after that email.
