The National Women’s Council (NWC) has called for legislation to criminalise sex for rent.
A report published today shows the housing market in Ireland has created “a perfect environment” for the exploitation of tenants.
This includes the placing of advertisements by prospective landlords offering discounted or free accommodation in return for sex.
Considering that a sex for rent agreement is often due to the absence of other viable means of finding a home, such agreements need to be viewed as sexual exploitation and understood as a form of gender-based violence according to the report.
Marginalised and vulnerable women are amongst those most harmed by sex-for-rent exploitation.
They include people without alternative housing options due to poverty, disability, insecure immigration status, domestic or family violence, debt, a lack of family support or unstable/poorly paid employment.
“Whether the currency is euro or through the payment of rent, it doesn’t change the nature of the violence and abuse of these practices,” the report said.
Unlike prostitution, there is no corresponding criminalisation of the sex purchaser in sex for rent sexual exploitation, nor supports or services for women subjected to it.
The NWC has pointed out that under the Istanbul Convention and the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, there is an obligation by Ireland to take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to suppress the exploitation of women.
“…it is therefore imperative that we see new legislation that outlaw’s sex-for-rent arrangements and the placing of advertisements for such arrangements which normalises and legitimises the commodification of sexual activity,” it said.
With little available data on the prevalence and nature of sex-for-rent exploitation in Ireland, the research combined a detailed literature review, along with selected expert interviews and the monitoring of online sites to generate the data.
Last year, a report by RTÉ Investigates revealed how some landlords are seeking sex from often vulnerable prospective tenants in exchange for reduced accommodation or free rent.
In March, the Sinn Féin TD Eoin Ó Broin introduced a private members bill in the Oireachtas which uses the Residential Tenancies Act to make it an offence for any landlord to seek an arrangement whereby sex would be exchanged for rental accommodation and that advertisements for such arrangements would also become an offence.
