‘Sex for rent’ fears lead to women-only viewing guarantee
THE growing number of female tenants being pressurised into “sex for rent” arrangements has prompted a major London landlord to offer women-only viewings of its apartments.
Ryan Prince, founder and chief executive of build-to-rent developer UNCLE, said he was shocked to learn of the scale of the practice by “people in a position of power and influence”. He added: “I couldn’t believe how many women had been inappropriately approached in some shape or form.”
A report from housing charity Shelter estimated that 250,000 women had been offered free or discounted rent in exchange for sex in the past five years.
UNCLE says it will guarantee that any prospective female tenant can have a viewing at one of its apartments with a woman if she requests this.
Mr Prince said: “We have resident women managers so if a woman is uncomfortable with doing a show around with a man they can ask for a woman. If they have had a bad experience in the past they will never have one with us.” UNCLE has two apartment blocks in New Cross and Stockwell and is completing a 45-storey tower in Elephant & Castle.
Mr Prince said about half of the company’s 1,000 tenants are women, many in their twenties or early thirties.
Kassy Essiet, resident manager at UNCLE Elephant & Castle, said: “The kind of behaviour highlighted by Shelter’s report is outrageous and is the opposite of how we do things at UNCLE. Renters in the UK are treated like second-class citizens and this report suggests women receive the worst of it.”
An investigation by The Sun found dozens of sex-for-rent adverts on the Craigslist website. One landlord offered a reporter posing as a potential tenant a flat in Canary Wharf rent free if she shared a bed with him twice a week.
A BBC investigation found a landlord who had a log cabin in his garden where tenants could sleep in return for a “physical arrangement once a week”.
The practice is potentially in breach of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which carries a maximum sentence of seven years, although there have been no prosecutions to date.