Isn’t it great, leaving questions that we can’t answer to an invisible force that we can’t control? It’s not necessarily helpful, but at least that way it becomes someone else’s problem. Don’t understand where humankind came about? Delegate to a higher authority and we no longer need to solve the question. Housing crisis? No problem – just leave it to that old invisible hand of the market.

The only problem is, market solutions to the housing crisis aren’t exactly working well so far. A decrease in planning regulations to “boost supply” has led to rabbit-hutch sized apartments being made out of old office blocks. All manner of ridiculous forms of shelter – including tents and garden sheds – have been put on the market at ridiculous prices for people to rent. And now we find that landlords are asking for sex instead of rent.

Sex-for-rent is the hidden danger faced by more and more female tenants | Penny Anderson Read more

Responding to claims that the deals amount to extortion of the vulnerable, one landlord said he saw no difference between this type of deal and charging extortionate rents to those who can’t otherwise afford it. Of course, there is a difference – both contractually and morally. The law upholds the right of autonomy over your own body, and with a few exceptions (eg late-term abortions), will not enforce any contract that infringes this right. Contractually speaking, rights in a written contract can at least be, to some extent, clear, codified and safe. Sex-for-rent deals, on the other hand, can’t work in this manner because their very legality rests on ambiguity. The adverts rely on covert language and sexual innuendo to remain legal, and so a number of them commit to ironing out the further detail in person.

This necessarily puts the tenant at risk. When you’re leaving the terms of your residence down to an elusive, verbal contract, how can the terms of consent ever really be agreed and defined? How do you negotiate autonomy over your own body with someone who has a key to your room or lives in your home, and can put you on the street if you refuse? And who do you complain to if those terms are broken? The fact that these landlords are exploiting the law becomes most obvious when you consider what would happen if either party tried to enforce their contract. The landlord would not, for example, be able to take a tenant to court for not paying up on time, or to send bailiffs round to ensure that arrears were paid in full.

Tenant charged £835 … to scribble a new name on a contract Read more

When you look at it that way, the solution seems clear: make this practice illegal so that predatory landlords can no longer act in this manner. Of course we should take measures to protect tenants from being coerced into sex for shelter. But it is not because of technical flaws that this kind of exploitation exists. The problem exists because people need homes, and they’ve been offered nothing but the rules of supply and demand to navigate that need. In such an unequal market as ours – where some can afford to invest in multiple, million-pound complexes as an investment while others wonder where they will live next week – this represents the tipping point. Increasingly priced out, some are forced to trade in a currency that no one but those in the most desperate circumstances would contemplate – in this case their bodies.

The adverts, callous and lacking humanity, are a picture of the market at its worst. “Frequent nudity and overt flaunting/flashing important, as is willingness to be infrequently watched remotely through a camera and photographed,” reads one. These adverts don’t feel like they’re discussing people, they are talking cold, concrete units to be traded. If the Achilles heel of the market wasn’t clear before, now it should be: for all of its supposed benefits, the one type of currency it is short in, surely has to be morality.