Lucy says she found it funny at first:

“I thought how are they even going to police that?’ But the landlord does inspections himself and he actually mentions it when he visits. We’re all girls and he starts lecturing us about ‘youths of today’ being hypersexual, and telling us to save ourselves for marriage.”

Obviously, Lucy’s sex life is none of his business. However, there’s not much she can do about it.

Lucy also told Vice News:

“It’s creepy but it’s just something I’m going to have to put up with.”

No-Sex Clauses Becoming More Common In Lease Agreements

Disturbingly, some tenants have found no-sex clauses actually written into their tenancy agreements. Sometimes it’s expressed overtly, at other times disguised as a ban on overnight guests.

24-year-old Chris rents an attic room in London. He shares a communal space with two other flatmates who are siblings. They are also his live-in landlords. 

He said that his flatmates’ parents frequently visit. About four months into living here, their mum overheard Chris having sex with his girlfriend and complained to his flatmates. They later slipped a note under his bedroom door, asking him to not have sex in the house.  They also informed him he could not host any overnight guests in general.

Chris told Vice what happened next:

“I confronted them in our shared kitchen and they kind of went ape shit, telling me it’s ‘wrong’ to have sex because it’s ‘their house’, which I think says everything. Landlords don’t look at tenants or lodgers like they actually deserve to be there.”

Chris looked up his tenancy agreement assuming he’d be able to argue his way out of it. But no, it turned out it was in his lease all along. The lease actually banned overnight guests. Chris is now adhering to these bizarre anti-sex rules as he doesn’t have anywhere else to live.

The question is: How can this happen? The laws surrounding no-sex tenancy clauses are basically non-existent in the UK. After all, tenancy laws already struggle to cover basics like protection from unjust evictions or rent increases. According to Qarrar Somji, director of Witan Solicitors, tenants with live-in landlords, like Chris, don’t have a lot of rights. There’s actually nothing stopping live-in landlords from banning overnight guests.

Those with live-out landlords, like Lucy, have tenancy agreements which afford more protections. But, Somji explains, these are essentially just contracts. This means landlords and tenants have the right to agree to whatever terms they wish. It turns out sex-bans are legally sound.

Qarrar Somji told Vice:

“The law does provide some protection to the tenant, because the landlord needs a court order to evict [them for this]. (This) meaning a judge would need to agree with the landlord that a tenant having sex in his own house is a problem.”

Landlords Are Exploiting No-Fault Eviction Clauses

The problem is, landlords don’t even need to resort to this. As Nick Ballard, head organiser at ACORN, tells VICE:

“Thanks to no-fault evictions – the ones the UK government has repeatedly promised and failed to ban – landlords can’t say they’re evicting you for having sex, but they can boot you out regardless”. 

Ballard says tenants have a legal right to the “quiet enjoyment” of their home. This means landlords can’t interfere with their tenants’ daily life. Sex isn’t written into that right, specifically. This is because no one ever expected landlords to be bothered about everyone’s sex habits. However, most of us would file sex under “enjoyment.”

Therefore, it could be a breach. In fact, even the World Health Organization considers sex to be part of our overall quality of life.

But Ballard adds that no-fault evictions allow landlords the power to evict tenants over their sex lives.

The control landlords are wielding over the sex lives of their tenants speaks to how little protections renters have. Rising anti-sex sentiment and a lack of housing protection are both products of a failing capitalist system. 

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