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Landlords are targeting vulnerable tenants to solicit sex in exchange for rent, advocates say

"Landlord coercion has always been a reality, but we've never seen anything like this," Jabola-Carolus said.
April 17, 2020, 5:41 PM EDT
By Gwen Aviles

Some landlords are taking advantage of the coronavirus outbreak, soliciting sexual favors in lieu of rent payments from economically vulnerable tenants, according to advocates.

Khara Jabola-Carolus, executive director of the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women, said her office has received more reports of landlords sexually harassing their tenants in the last two weeks than it had in the two years since she started working there, including cases of landlords offering to move in with tenants and sending sexually explicit photos to them after they communicated concerns about paying April rent.

While the number of cases wasn't necessarily astronomical — the commission received 10 reports about nine landlords — Jabola-Carolus said they were especially notable given such cases go "vastly underreported."

"Landlord coercion has always been a reality, but we've never seen anything like this," Jabola-Carolus said. "The coronavirus creates the perfect conditions for landlords who want to do this because not only are people being instructed to stay home, but the virus has added to the economic stress with people losing their jobs, especially in Hawaii, which is driven by tourism."

Around 5 million more people filed first-time unemployment claims last week, bringing the total of unemployed Americans to nearly 22 million. While some states have enacted eviction and rent moratoriums, experts caution that these policies may not be enough to keep low- and middle- income renters in their homes. Only 69 percent of apartment tenants had paid their monthly rent by April 5, down from 81 percent the previous month, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council.

Advocates like Renee Williams, a senior staff attorney at the National Housing Law Project, suspect that as tenants continue to struggle economically, there will be heightened reports of sexual harassment enacted by landlords in the upcoming months.

"Landlords have all the leverage in the landlord-tenant relationship and in these types of situations, they especially prey on women who are vulnerable, who are housing insecure, have bad credit or who don't have anywhere to go," Williams said. "We've already seen that the pandemic is exacerbating a lot of systemic issues and sexual harassment targeted at tenants by landlords is likely to be one of these issues."

Tenants have recourse
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to uproot daily life, there may be added confusion about where tenants who may be experiencing such harassment can go with their claims, but advocates say tenants have recourse.

"Under the federal Fair Housing Act, sexual harassment by landlords is illegal," Sandra Park, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberty Union's Women's Rights Project, said. "Many states also have laws that ban sexual harassment and discrimination."

She added that tenants experiencing harassment should file a report with the police to "leave a paper trail," but given that doing so does not always guarantee an investigation, she also suggested that tenants should seek the help of local legal and social services, including human rights commissions.

"Many courts are closed right now, but getting involved with these organizations and having a lawyer from them call landlords could put landlords on notice that their behavior is unacceptable," Park said.

Yet Park and other advocates acknowledge that women who are most vulnerable — particularly women of color and immigrant and undocumented women — will not feel comfortable submitting a report or pursuing action against their landlords and that many times when they do so, they are often dismissed.

"I am do not think most of the women who submitted reports will go on to pursue action because they are so vulnerable," Jabola-Carolus said.

This is why she created a guide for those whose landlords may be pressuring them for a sexual arrangement.

"We want landlords to know we're watching them and that women who are dealing with this are not alone," Jabola-Carolus said. "It's really women who are holding every community right now. We're the majority of health care, elder care and child care workers and coronavirus is highlighting the silence of oppression of women in the U.S. I could not even envision a more gendered crisis."

Stay-at-home orders can exacerbate harassment
Compared to sexual harassment in the workplace, sexual harassment in housing has received much less attention, according to Park, whose first case with the ACLU was on behalf of an Alabama woman whose real estate manager tried to repeatedly coerce her into having sex with him and attempted to raise her rent when she refused. Though limited, the research on sexual harassment in housing suggests how prevalent the issue extends. According to a 2018 pilot study conducted by Rigel Oliveri of the University of Missouri's School of Law, 10 percent of low-income women in Columbia, Missouri, had experienced significant sexual harassment by landlords.

While there are federal and state laws prohibiting sexual harassment in housing, many advocates call upon housing providers and public housing authorities that do not yet have these policies to institute them.

Isa Woldeguiorguis, executive director of the Center for Hope and Healing, also urges people to not discount the power of checking in on neighbors during this time, as staying at home not only can exacerbate sexual harassment, but other forms of violence and abuse.

"Reach out in whatever ways you can. We may not physically be able to be there, but we can call or walk by their homes," Woldeguiorguis said. "Survivors need us not to forget."

Have you seen The Merchant of Venice?

Shylock is far from the hook nosed monster that he’s usually portrayed as. He’s a human being who acts like any human being Would when wronged. He is constant in his call for justice and the law, because that’s the only recourse he has.

The merchant he demands the pound of flesh from has previously spat at him gand abused him in the streets. His response is human, and Shakespeare shows him as a human. This is a play where nobody comes out looking good, and Shylock is treated harsher than the rest. I felt sorry for him at the end.

This was written at a time when there were no Jews living in England, they were almost mythical like the talking wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. Look at the portrayal of Barabas in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, who is thoroughly evil. Shylock is very human,and Shakespeare does not deserve the scorn heaped on him because of this play. He actually portrayed Jews as people, not monsters.

I think so as well. But of course his play would have had no meaning to a London audience at that time if there weren't long-standing anti-Jewish fables, myths and slanders in English culture.

But there definitely were Jews in London at that time. Hundreds but surely not more. Of course they hid their identities or pretended conversion for the obvious reasons. Elizabeth had a Jewish physician for a time but was killed, accused of being part of a plot to kill her.

He wasn’t Jewish, he’d recanted his faith as they all had to if they wanted to remain.

I wasn’t disputing the anti Jewish sentiment in England at the time, I was pointing out that Shakespeare wasn’t part of it, he portrayed Jews as human beings.

Have you any proof that there were practicing Jews in England at that time?

Recanting is pretty easy to do. I've done it with wedding vows twice. But regardless of whether he observed Passover, he was a Jew.

As to Jews in England at the time, that question came up in a Shakespeare course I did at university. Cannot recall source material or if it came from the prof. I'm not interested in researching the question right now but it shouldn't be too difficult to establish.

Jewish people have commonly hid their identity. I had a friend in Vancouver who only discovered she and her siblings and parents were Jewish when she was about 25. An older sister had found documentation and confronted the parents. The father had been a chemist in occupied Poland and barely escaped execution (his Jewish lab partner did not). Mother and father escaped to Canada and pretended to be Catholic and raised the children in that faith.

That, of course, is Robert Mercer's big right wing operation. And he's just thrown a lotta money to Trump's re-election campaign.

And don't it all just figure.

We can refer to this as the sociopassive case.

Any money coming into the DNC from left wing operations? That is a non story.

It's because of this that Laura Ingraham has resigned from Fox to volunteer on the hospital staff front lines helping to treat those with the virus. She is a real Christian. Bless her heart.

The first King Edward expelled the Jews in 1292. It was a common enough operation--he owed them money, so he expelled them. That kind of thing happened in various parts of Europe. Many took shelter in Venice, on the island of Ghetto. Originally a pleasant place, as it filled up, it became squalid. They filtered back, but they did have to keep their heads down. Under the protectorate, and perhaps even before that, there was tolerance of Jews, who were, after all, distantly revered by Puritans and dissenters, such as Independents and Baptists. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, some Jewish leaders quietly complained to Charles II about extortion, and rather than dealing with Parliament, he sent some boys around to have a quiet chat with the extortionists.

In other words you're as scared of confronting me and the truth. Islam has turned your country to ****. You do not confront them either.

I have already explained you live under Nazi rule, not me.

Sorry that is something you do not know about. Your hate for Christianity is a gimme. Your credibility on who is a true Christian is nil.

Always good to have you around, young man.

CNN

Why just the percentages? How about the real numbers? Are the numbers that low? They must be.

And so is yours. Posers always give themselves away.

I never claimed to know who is a real Christian. Please show me my post where I claimed that. Thanks.

Ever seen a quote from Twitter?




https://www.independentsentinel.com/pelosi-becomes-unhinged-when-china-who-are-in-the-crosshairs/