Female international students targeted for prostitution by Brampton landlords: Councillor

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A Brampton city councillor claims that rental ads are exploiting desperate international students, particularly girls, and prostituting them for rent.

Councillor Rowena Santos told the Toronto Sun that Brampton’s dire international students situation started during the pandemic, and the city “had no choice to deal with it.”

“We have this unreported population and after years of having many international students come to the city and live here, we’ve seen a proliferation of illegal basement apartments, with single-detached homes being converted into multi-unit dwellings where people rent to students,” Santos said.

She said that due to what she said is a lack of proper student housing in the city, “they end up in these horrible situations where landlords are exploiting them.”

Ads on Facebook Marketplace, Kijiji and other classified sites have increasingly included “friends with benefits” as a so-called bonus for prospective tenants.

Concerned residents have begun sharing those ads with councillors, including one first reported by 6ixBuzzTV that gave potential renters the option of free rent, food and a $200 shopping bonus “for those who are okay with friends-with-benefits relationship.”

“Because of cultural dynamics, many of these young women don’t even understand sexuality, don’t even understand consent, some of them are completely inexperienced, so the term ‘friends with benefits’ makes it even more horrible, especially if they’re already struggling to find a place to live or the financial means to pay for it,” Santos said.

She noted that some of these young women have ended up pregnant and don’t know what to do because of the shame tied to it, so they don’t want to go home.

Worse yet, others are committing suicide and being shipped home in coffins, Santos said.

Brampton is the first municipality to have a charter related to international students’ quality of life and part of the Residential Rental Licensing (RRL) pilot program centres on housing.

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But there’s only so much municipalities can do.

“The Landlord Tenant Board is provincial, it’s one of our biggest problems as a municipality,” Santos said, pointing out that she believes the licensing of landlords should be treated similar to a business.

She added that if a landlord makes a complaint, the municipality can’t deal with it, only the Landlord Tenant Board can.

“And the list of complaints with them is so long that the tenants, the bad tenants, end up being there for years.”

Santos supported two motions put forward at the Sept. 4 session by Councillor Dennis Keenan, who told the Sun in a statement that his area “has seen an increase of derelict rental properties operated by slum landlords,” and is often sent photos of properties and ads targeting students, mostly women.

Due to the RRL, the city is hiring 39 new bylaw officers to enforce the rules the municipality can control when it comes to dealing with landlords by ensuring they maintain property and health and safety standards.

Keenan added that he looks forward to “working with the province to assist us in how we at the city can move forward with action to put a stop to the squalor-like conditions that we see some students living in.”

Mayor Patrick Brown told the Sun that the city’s enforcement teams are “diligently and professionally responding to a wide range of complaints and conducting thorough investigations.”

He added: “We have heard loud and clear from our residents that we can’t turn a blind eye to these infractions. The city of Brampton will not tolerate slum landlords!”