Sex worker offered free accommodation in exchange for sex by exploitative 'predators'
Linda Kavanagh of Sex Workers Alliance Ireland said rising costs including accommodation and utility bills are driving people into sex work. Picture: Getty Images
A young woman who says she engages in sex work to pay her rent costs says some men are preying on the homeless and offering them free accommodation in return for sex.
The woman has been in the sex industry for the past six years in both Cork and Dublin. She previously worked in childcare.
She contacted the in response to an investigation by this newspaper into sex for rent arrangements being offered on classified advertisement websites.
The issue will be raised at an Oireachtas committee on housing, local government and heritage in January. Sinn Féin’s housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin is also to raise the matter with Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien and Justice Minister Helen McEntee.
A report published by the Residential Tenancies Board before Christmas showed the current average monthly rent is €1,397, rising to €1,915.58 in Dublin.
The sex worker said: “I use sex work to pay for my rent. Starting out, I got a lot of ‘offers’ – if you can even call them that – to sleep with men for free in order to have access to their apartment/an apartment they owned. I haven’t got any in recent years as such men tend to prey on those who are housing-insecure or homeless.
She said there was little difference between men offering reduced or no rent in return for sex and people offering accommodation in return for labour.
“They’re the unsurprising result of a housing system that has failed and a landlord population that exerts so much power over tenants," she said.
“In my experience and from what I have read or been told by others who’ve experienced sex work differently, the housing crisis has enabled sexual predators and they effectively target the most vulnerable. Sometimes these vulnerable people are sex workers, other times they are not.”
She added that when working in childcare, she was offered free or reduced rent in return for minding people’s children.
“The housing crisis allows exploitation across industries – however, unlike those in childcare, there are little to no protections in our industry if we find ourselves in such an exploitative situation," she said.
There are currently a number of advertisements online offering free accommodation for services apart from sex.
One offers a “free room for rent young guy here will to help out to (sic) any women but she has to keep the place tidy in Kildare.”
Another, placed by a Cuban woman, seeks free accommodation in return for household chores.
One which has since expired offered free accommodation in a location between Drogheda and Balbriggan “for any girl who can clean and make food sometimes”.
Linda Kavanagh of Sex Workers Alliance Ireland said rising costs including accommodation and utility bills are driving people into sex work and her organisation is in contact with a number of homeless sex workers in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway.
