Sex For Rent Adverts To Lure The Homeless

Vulnerable young homeless people are being lured by unscrupulous landlords with adverts offering accommodation in exchange for sex, a BBC investigation has found.

The offers, which are completely legal, are on classified ad sites such as Craigslist. But charities have described the adverts as exploitative and MP Peter Kyle wants them made illegal. Craigslist, which on one day carried more than 100 such adverts, has not commented.

Adverts seen by BBC South East included one posted by a Maidstone man asking for a woman to move in and pretend to be his girlfriend, another offered a double room in Rochester in exchange for “services”, whilst one in Brighton was aimed at young men. One landlord in London was looking for a “naughty girl” to move in.

Landlords who posted the adverts were clear how the arrangement would work. One said: “I was thinking once a week, something like that, I’m happy as long as there’s sex involved.” Another read: “You agree sort of like a couple of times a week, pop into my room sort of thing, but as far as the apartment’s concerned, it’s like completely as if we’re flatmates. It’s all the bills, the rent, free.”

One landlord, who spoke anonymously to BBC South East, defended the deals as a “friend with benefits” type of arrangement. He said: “You can argue that high rent charged by landlords is taking advantage too. There’s no compulsion for them to do this. Everyone goes into it with their eyes wide open. I am the last type of person who’d like to take advantage. Both sides have something the other person wants. I see it as a win-win situation.”

“I can only speak for myself” he went on, “but I would prefer someone older – not someone young enough to be my daughter, ” he added. When asked about whether such arrangements were akin to sexual exploitation, he said people working in jobs they do not like was “like a form of prostitution”.

But Andrew Wallis, of the anti-slavery charity Unseen, said: “I think these adverts go as close to the edge of the law that they possibly can without breaking the law. They would argue that they have chosen voluntarily to enter that situation. The trouble is when you have a vulnerable person who then becomes exploited, the concept of choice soon disappears.”

A recent survey of over 400 homeless people, conducted by the homeless charity Centrepoint, found that a quarter (25%) said they had stayed with a stranger and 14% said they had thought about doing so. The survey did not ask whether they had sex with the person.

Paul Noblet, from Centrepoint, suggested website owners could consider a voluntary code under which they could monitor and remove such adverts. But Mr Kyle went further and said they should be compelled to deal with the issue. “If they don’t stand up to this and then accept their responsibility, I will be pushing for legislation to do it for them,” he said.