The issue of ‘rent for sex’ - tenants offered free or discounted rent in return for sexual favours - is now a problem amongst letting agents it has been claimed.
Previously it was widely thought to be an issue amongst landlords who dealt directly with tenants but a new statement from the activist group Generation Rent suggests otherwise.
The group says it’s conducted a survey which received 1,045 responses. And it states: “4% of private renters who responded to the survey reported that they had been offered discounted or free rent by a landlord or letting agent … Shockingly, this figure rose to 1 in 10 respondents with incomes of less than £20,000.”
The activists demand a dedicated ‘Sex for Rent’ law targeting predatory landlords and letting agents; increased legal aid so that tenants “can access representation, support, and justice”; and increased support to protect financially vulnerable renters from being forced or coerced into ‘Sex for Rent’ arrangements by raising Local Housing Allowance, scrapping the benefits cap, and increasing Discretionary Housing Payments funding to local authorities.
Ben Twomey, the new director of Generation Rent, says: “With the cost-of-living crisis raging on, not enough is being done to ensure that private renters are kept safe in their homes.
“More must be done to protect women with lower and insecure incomes, minority ethnic women, members of the LGBTQ+ community and people who have no recourse to public funds.
“A new law would enable victims of ‘Sex for Rent’ to seek justice, however without adequate court funding and support for struggling renters, this exploitative and predatory practice will remain a disturbing feature of the Private Rented Sector.”
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Is there anything GR won’t accuse landlords and agents of?
And for most letting agents, they would also need to have the landlord and an accounts department in on it too...
I'm also tempted to be 'outraged and offended' that they have only mentioned women being victims of this too. Men can't be exploited too?
Well, I don't see why a law like this wouldn't be a good thing anyway. A letting agent offering money off for services seems absurd, it counters everything our job is about.
A spokesperson from Generation Hate has demanded that a new law be introduced with life imprisonment and unlimited fines after it was revealed that Landlords Children some as young as 3 months old have been preying on vulnerable tenants and demanding sex for rent
These Evil Toddlers need to be arrested and imprisoned without trial until we find a crime that fits them the spokesperson for Generation Hate demanded
One must be realistic. In view of the fact that the professor Jays report has been ignored l see this as an attempt to shift the blame onto to landlords. Slippery starmer at his best.
Generation Rent - or "Generation Hate" as @Anthony Altman amusingly (and fairly accurately) calls them, as a subset of the larger group of Generation Entitlement - have not discovered anything new... Sex for Rent goes back to at least Babylon (not the recent, and I thought rather disappointing, film but the city in ancient Mesopotamia).
What Generation Rent/Hate doesn't bother to mention, of course, is that apart from the probably tiny number of sleazy landlords offering accommodation for sexual favours there's always a somewhat larger number of tenants - who usually gave false identities - using rental properties very profitably as brothels!
In the process, of course, there's a huge amount of exploitation and abuse of lots of vulnerable people (usually young women, often brought to the county illegally)... although this is almost certainly a far bigger problem, and on a far bigger scale, than the occasional "sex for rent" incidents it obviously isn't as "sexy" for Generation Rent to concern themselves with because they're focused on hating landlords...
At the same time there are also plenty of other abuses in the private rental market - all at the huge expense of the unfortunate landlords hit by them, e.g. the people who do enormous damage by turning all sorts of types of properties into cannabis factories...
...but I expect that as far a Generation Rent is concerned all that's fine because, after all, they believe its a tenant's "right" not to pay rent if they don't feel like it, and to do absolutely anything they want with their "homes".
If anything is to blame it is probably tied up in the rent to rent let’s where the sub landlord is untraceable.
In a documentary about Albanian people smugglers he was interviewing female candidates for the role of prostitutes. Further a lot of of these wimmin In their 50s plus seem to have a need for young ladies as live in housekeepers. Obviously not like dirty old men.
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