SAN FRANCISCO — In Atlanta, an online ad offers a room in exchange for "sex and light office duty." In Los Angeles, a one-bedroom pool house is free "to a girl that is skilled and willing." And in New York City, a $700-a-month room is available at a discount to a fit female willing to provide sex.
On the widely used Web site Craigslist, some landlords and apartment dwellers looking for roommates are offering to accept sex in lieu of rent.
"They have to be attractive. I don't let just anybody come into my house," said Mike, a man who answered the phone at the New York City listing but declined to give his last name — and refused to say whether he has, in fact, collected the rent under the sheets.
The offering of shelter for sex is older than, well, real estate itself. But the online come-ons are franker than anything you might see in the newspaper classifieds, because they are not edited by Craigslist, and perhaps also because the anonymity of the Internet often causes people to shed their inhibitions.
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Paul J. Browne, deputy police commissioner in New York, said investigators have found that Craigslist ads are often "little more than a form of voyeurism that didn't result in an actual exchange of sex for rent."
Craigslist provides mostly free classifieds for apartments, used cars and just about everything else in more than 200 cities in 35 countries.
"I usually rent the room for 600, but if you are really ticklish and willing to trade being tickled for the extra rent then we have a deal," writes a gay man offering a $350-a-month room in the San Francisco Bay Area.
An ad for a town house near Bradenton, Fla., seeks a "female that likes to be nude. Nothing more expected."
It is unclear how much success people have had with their rent-for-sex ads.
One man said he became friends with a bisexual man who answered his ad but did not end up taking the room. The same user said a man visiting from Russia answered his ad and they shared dinner and a bottle of wine, but that was it.
"This is only a silly sideline adventure of mine," the man, who would not give his name, wrote in an e-mail. "I feel a little embarrassed about it."
Jim Buckmaster, chief executive of San Francisco-based Craigslist, said the company forbids ads that break the law, but his staff of 19 could not possibly police all postings. Craigslist instead relies on users to flag ads they find offensive. If enough people agree, the ad is removed.
