In Brussels, the cost of renting a property has increased dramatically in recent years. The rental market shrank in 2025, with thousands of new rental properties disappearing despite growing demand. Last year, the average cost of renting a property increased by 3.7% to €1,376.
This upward trend in the cost of renting has led some people, including students, homeless people and undocumented migrants, to to accept accommodation in exchange for sexual services.
'I won’t give you money, but I’ll host you'
Cindy Meirsschaut, a peer support worker at the Centre Circé, which is run by the charity L’Ilot, remembers the time she was homeless. It was nine years ago, and it lasted four years.
At Charleroi station, where she spent most of her days, she quickly learned what certain “offers” for help really meant: a meal, a movie, a place to sleep – but rarely without expectations.
“When you live on the street, almost nobody looks at you or talks to you. So, when someone does, you know what it means – sexual favours," says Meirsschaut.
Homeless women are particularly at risk in such situations. According to a French Senate report on homeless women published in October 2024, “after one year on the street, 100% of women have been raped”. Yet in 2025, Belgium's Samusocial recorded 3,098 refusals to admit unaccompanied women out of 18,719 requests.
Around certain facilities, such as the women's shelter Centre Louiza, men wait. “Come sleep at my place,” or “I won’t give you money, but I’ll host you,” can be heard, Meirsschaut tells me.
For those left without a bed, the choice can feel immediate and unavoidable to avoid the street. “The situation has reportedly remained unchanged for the past two years,” Samu Social confirmed to The Brussels Times, with teams noting “a general deterioration in safety conditions in the neighbourhood”.
But men are not spared either, as demonstrated by the scandal surrounding Germain Dufour, revealed in the investigative magazine Médor. The priest and former member of the French-speaking Community Parliament for the Green Party (Écolo), who died in 2023, reportedly raped vulnerable young men who were homeless or in irregular administrative situations in exchange for housing.
A widespread but hidden practice
Beyond those who are visibly homeless, people in insecure housing – staying temporarily with friends or family – are also at risk. Many women avoid sleeping rough precisely because of its dangers. They often rely on temporary arrangements – staying with acquaintances or accepting conditional housing – which keeps them largely invisible in official statistics.
In the Brussels-Capital Region, around 1,000 people are sleeping on the streets, but nearly 10,000 lack stable housing. “Using the term ‘homeless’ erases 9,000 people,” explains Laurent d’Ursel, founder of DoucheFLUX, a Brussels-based non-profit organisation working to end homelessness and challenge the notion that it is inevitable.
The phenomenon extends far beyond the streets. Online, coded offers are easy to find.
“Flatshare with an open-minded woman,” “Accommodation in exchange for shared time,” or “Free housing for services.”: these ads circulate on platforms such as GTrouve, Wannonce, Vivastreet or Facebook groups like “Hébergement contre services Belgique.”
If domestic chores are often mentioned – cleaning, cooking, running errands – sexual expectations frequently linger beneath the surface, sometimes becoming explicit in private messages.
Among those responding to such offers are women facing imminent eviction or going through divorce, desperately searching for housing to avoid ending up without a roof over their head. “A survival strategy”, points out Ariane Dierickx, director of L’Ilot.
Rising rents, growing vulnerability
The broader economic context fuels the phenomenon. Between January 2021 and 2025, rents in Belgium rose by 18.3%, further tightening an already saturated housing market.
For students, finding affordable housing has become increasingly difficult. As a result, they are among those most affected by arrangements involving housing in exchange for sexual services.
Chris Paulis, a retired anthropologist at the University of Liège, has interviewed around a hundred young people on the subject. She identified a widespread problem that is not confined to Brussels.
“In most cases, in exchange for a flat or reduced rent, the female students were required, on average twice a week, to make themselves available to their landlords for sexual intercourse,” says Paulis.
For some students, she says, the fear of being unable to study or of having to drop out due to a lack of affordable accommodation outweighs the risks, including the possibility of trauma.
In the December 2025 study 'Between homelessness and the search for stability: housing pathways among MSM and trans people involved in sex work and/or prostitution', Ana Daniela Dresler (a PhD student and research assistant in urban studies in the Department of Geography at the ULB) identifies four types of precarious housing conditioned on sexual favours.
These include apartments with extremely high rents which can be reduced in exchange for sex, as well as people using dating apps to secure a place to stay for one or several nights. Referred to as “hobosexuals” in media outlets such as Urbania or Courrier International, these individuals seek partners over dating apps primarily to avoid homelessness.
'Between the plague and cholera'
Migrants are also particularly exposed. When you are a woman, without stable income, foreign, and undocumented, the risks multiply due to intersecting vulnerabilities. Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Institute for the Equality of Women and Men warned about cases in which Ukrainian women hosted by men were asked to provide sexual services in return for accommodation.
For undocumented individuals, filing a complaint is fraught with risk: how can they go to the police when they fear deportation to the country they fled?
And when children are involved, the pressure intensifies. “Between the plague and cholera or the street and sexual services, you have to choose,” says Alice Perrot, a social worker at Centre Circé.
Some women also feel they have no choice but to remain with a partner, knowing they would struggle to secure housing alone in a highly competitive and expensive market. Paulis refers to this dynamic as “couple prostitution”.
Contested terminology
How should we term this phenomenon? Sexual services, sexual favours, prostitution, abuse of vulnerability, sexual violence? The terminology of the phenomenon itself is contested between organisations and stakeholders.
“When it involves two consenting adults, it is difficult to classify such an exchange as an offence," says Charles-Éric Clesse, a professor of criminal law at ULB. "Where would the violation lie in the sexual penal code if both parties agree and the consent is not legally invalid?”
But can consent truly be free and informed when the alternative is sleeping on the street and facing systemic violence?
Vulnerabilities such as age, pregnancy, illness, physical or mental disability, and socio-economic status must be considered.
To mark 8 March 2026 and International Women’s Day, L’Ilot brought together voices from the worlds of feminism, social work, research and civil society to denounce the reality of exchanging sexual favours for accommodation and to emphasise that this constitutes “structural violence” rather than an “arrangement”.
Structural inequalities at play
If women are disproportionately affected, it is no coincidence. Economic inequality, single parenthood, and discrimination make access to independent housing more difficult for them.
In Belgium, women represent 75% of the lowest income decile. Accessing housing independently, without pressure or dependency, is therefore significantly harder for many.
“Social services, local authorities, health services, charities and housing organisations have to work together”, confirms the cabinet of the Minister of the Brussels-Capital Region Government responsible for social affairs, solidarity and social action Ahmed Laaouej.
At present, shelters are saturated, and support services are overstretched. The cabinet of the State Secretary for Housing for the Brussels-Capital Region, Karine Lalieux, told The Brussels Times: “Bruxelles Logement pays close attention to the handling of such situations as part of its mission to combat discrimination in access to housing. It aims to strengthen and sustain these solutions while addressing the root causes of the problem.”
The cabinet also states that work is underway on “specific measures to better protect women in precarious housing situations”.
But organisations campaigning for the right to housing and against homelessness are not being spared from austerity measures. Angela.D, an organisation defending the right to housing for women and gender minorities, is one of the victims of these budget cuts and of a voluntary sector left without government support for more than 600 days. On 30 July, it will cease its activities.
Yet housing is a fundamental right. For charity workers, the priority is clear: ensuring that access to housing does not come at the cost of safety or dignity.
