Overseeing this comparative safety is the owner, Mark Ford. At 54, he has been running Sweatbox for over a decade and in the last few years has been balancing two competing stresses: trying to help gay men falling victim to the housing crisis, but also ensuring he sets boundaries that adhere to the restrictions on his business. There are, he says, no easy solutions.
“There was a point at which a Polish guy – who was very sweet – had his post redirected to us,” he says. “At that point we had to say, ‘You cannot live here.’ I’m not licensed as a hotel or as accommodation in any other way, so there are legal requirements.” As such, says Ford, “I might even shorten [customers’ stay] to a six-hour rule.” [...]
Against a backdrop of having to have sex with a succession of landlords, Sweatbox, for Spurr, was a break from exploitation. His use of such venues is typical among many who spoke to BuzzFeed News, describing it as part of the mix of ad-hoc, short-term arrangements on which they relied to avoid sleeping on the street: a few nights on a friend’s sofa, a night with someone they meet on Grindr, a couple of nights at a sauna, then repeat. [...]
“We had a period when we would get itinerant workers – non-gay guys coming over from Eastern Europe and wherever else – who were coming to London to work and they found out about this amazing place on the cheap,” says Ford.
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