‘Sex for Rent’ exploitation is where landlords offer discounted or free accommodation in return for sexual access to a tenant. A new report from the National Women’s Council (NWC) says that women in extreme housing difficulty are being forced to make a choice between this form of sexual exploitation and homelessness.
The NWC report argues that it is imperative that ‘sex for rent’ practices are urgently addressed through legislation. A specific criminal offence must be created to deter and penalise would-be landlords from engaging in or proposing these kinds of exploitative living situations. The circumstances of the housing market in Ireland - record numbers of homeless people (including a significant growth in women among their numbers) unaffordable rents, and a lack of homes available to let - create a perfect environment for the exploitation of tenants.
Secure housing is essential to hold down a job, participate in education, and to be included in wider civil society. Housing insecurity and deprivation have long been associated with poor mental and physical health and poverty. Our communal experience of living through Covid has shown us the central importance of housing to our well-being.
The experience of NWC member organisations on the frontlines of service provision to women victim/survivors of domestic sexual and gender-based violence shows that there is an abiding link between insecure housing and such violence. One of the main drivers of homelessness among women is domestic abuse, and being unhoused makes women more vulnerable to sexual violence.
Our research shows that housing is a key mechanism through which gendered inequalities in power and privilege are perpetuated and maintained. We see clearly here that these opportunistic and predatory landlords are overwhelmingly men, while the ‘tenants’ to whom these sex for rent proposals are made are women. These landlords are leveraging the privilege of their housing by seeking to sexually exploit particularly vulnerable, housing-insecure women.
The severe housing crisis within a context of pervasive gender-based violence is at the root of the problem. Marginalised women are amongst those most harmed by ‘sex-for-rent’ practices including those without alternative housing options. Poverty, disability, seeking to leave direct provision, insecure immigration status, fleeing domestic or family violence, a lack of family support, or unstable/poorly paid employment can all mean a woman has no alternatives. Research in the UK has shown that the lower your income, the more likely it is that a ‘sex-for-rent’ arrangement will be proposed to you.
These arrangements seem to be primarily proposed to women renting a room in a house – often the cheapest option – as opposed to own-door accommodation. This means that in the case of sex for rent exploitation, they move in with their predator and these renters (legally understood as licensees – as opposed to tenants) have virtually no legal protections in relation to their home. So there is a significant and exploitable power imbalance between owner and renter. This two-tier rental system where some renters are protected by law, but others are not, must end.
Sex for rent exploitation is damaging, degrading, and dehumanising for women even when they do not accept the arrangements. If these proposals were made in a work context they would correctly be understood as a form of sexual harassment and there would be a series of supported steps open to the employee and employer to protect the worker from this harassment. There are no similar supportive or protective processes open to women when this form of harassment happens in the place that is supposed to be their safe haven – their home.
For this reason, we recommend that the responsibility of the Residential Tenancies Board be broadened to cover issues of sexual harassment within rental housing. They must have the power to investigate and remove from their register any landlord who has been found to have engaged in sexual harassment of a tenant.
Government must take immediate steps to end the exploitation of women in this situation by outlawing sex for rent exploitation and extending tenancy protections to all renters. However, sex for rent exploitation is unlikely to be successfully eliminated until the housing crisis is ended.