"Free" Student Housing

It's not getting any easier to attend college and that seems to be true no matter where you live. Take Italy for example: a 26 March article in the Italian journal La Repubblica (www.larepubblica.it) states that 3 out of 100 students have taken to sleeping with their landlord as an alternative to paying the rent.

And you thought YOU had it rough.

But lest you think -- like I initially did -- that the newspaper took their statistical data to the extreme and pulled it from a narrow margin of sampling consider this:

In Italy the real costs that hit parents and students in the pocket book isn't for education per se, it's for meals and housing. A typical year in a university in Milan or Torino for example can run anywhere between 1500 and 3000 euro (that's about US 2200.00 - 4500.00). Conversely, the cost of renting not an apartment but a ROOM can run anywhere between 300 - 700 euro a month ( 450 - 900 dollars). And that's not including utility bills or an occasional meal every now and then.

So is it any wonder that students already living on a limited budget might consider sleeping with their landlord a few times a months in exchange for not paying rent?

Apparently Italy isn't the only country faced with this phenomenon. In 2006 in France, a similar study was conducted and researchers discovered that 40,000 students between the ages of 19 and 25 were ready to -- or already had -- provide sexual favors to their landlord in exchange for room and board.

If something about this set-up doesn't sound right then step to the head of the class. According to La Repubblica article, undercover reporters (no pun intended) spoke to dozens of landlords and discovered that two of the biggest sources for potential student-lovers and the landlords that rent to them can be found at www.studenti.it and www.kijiji.it . Two sites that -- oddly enough -- are actually great resources for students and cover such areas as end-of-year finals, studying tips and finding jobs. The sites also promote nearly 500,000 ads for apartments or houses to rent.

Like I said -- a great resource if you happen to be a resourceful landlord.

So in the name of investigative journalism I hit the forums, but I'll be honest with you, I didn't find any ads that specifically offered room and board in exchange for sex. Although that doesn't mean they aren't out there. In fact, fresh on the coat-tails of this article, the

Webtv version of La Repubblica (www.tv.repubblica.it) posted the TV follow-up to the article-in-question. Check it out if you understand Italian. At the same time I called my niece and nephew on my late brother-in-law's side of the family. Both are attending University in Northern Italy. I broached the question to the both of them: "Had they seen or were they aware of this type of bartering?"

My nephew felt it as an exaggeration. Yet at the same time he felt that "...Sure, it doesn't surprise me that some landlords would prey on the economic belt-tightening of some students..." At the other end of the spectrum my niece wasn't surprised by the accusations the article made. But added, "...It depends what a person's priorities are. I can see where certain students might pocket the expense money given to them by their parents and then make a deal with a landlord. But I also don't see how any parent would not want to be in the loop when it comes to where their kid's are living while attending school...."

Fact or fiction? I tend to believe this phenomenon -- if that's what you want to call it -- is alive and well and thriving not only in Italy and in parts of Europe but back in the United States as well.

Far be it from me to pontificate here, but as a parent I just don't see how a child could pull this off or even WHY they would want to go this route in the first place. But then, not too much surprises me anymore.

And at least on this side of the Atlantic -- where the competition among students is so fierce and the search for jobs is so intense - sleeping with the landlord may just be one more step in finding the means to an end.