No apartment for 2 lesbians = trial at Court of Human Rights

Because a landlord wanted his house in Vienna not to rent to a lesbian couple, is the chairman of the Lambda Legal Committee, Helmut Graupner, before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. For, according to Austrian law, this discrimination is allowed.

Lisa and her partner Claudia Hampala Tondl wanted to move together in the fifth district of Vienna. The rent of 900 euros was indeed quite high, "but it was a piece of this garden, which we liked very much," the 27-year-old student recalls in the daily newspaper Der Standard. The broker was about to terminate the lease with her alone and asked for proof of income from Hampala. As the two women said: "We do not plan on WG, but are a couple we share all expenses.."

Thus, the problems began: suddenly became a citizen and an income proof of three and a half times the amount of rent required. For heterosexual couples remained the same but the conditions were, test calls. "In our personal environment, it makes no difference whether one is heterosexual or homosexual. But this is a soap bubble, as in Austria, it often looks different," the 27-year-old student is disappointed.

Other hand, complain they wanted - but the discrimination in the provision of services exempt from punishment in Austria, at least for lesbians and gays. For migrants the same behavior of the landlord would have been punished. Nevertheless, the Constitutional Court is no unequal treatment. He followed in the last year of a statement by the Federal Government. This argued that denial contributes to a rented apartment "strangers" to the "difficulty in integration. "Comparable social consequences" for the discrimination of lesbians and gays "it has not," the government.

Therefore Graupner is now before the Court of Human Rights. The Austrian Equal Treatment Act violates the basic rights of non-discrimination laid down in Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Particularly bitter was only in March, the relevant law had been amended with appropriate changes were even in the bill. Then they were re-painted - at the urging of the ÖVP.

Source: GGG.at