Student accommodation: Stop accommodating the private sector

Our universities are no longer home to the brightest minds changing the world — they’re home to large real estate companies with an increasingly insignificant academic wing, writes the president of Trinity College Dublin Students' Union Jenny Maguire

Trinity College Dublin's Students' Union President Jenny Maguire: 'I will not accept students sleeping in cars. I will not accept vulture funds and neoliberal policies destroying this country.'

This week, for the first time, the students’ unions of the five biggest colleges in Dublin took to the streets to ask homeowners a simple question: room for one more? 

Often referred to as ‘digs’, the student leaders, myself included, were asking people to register any spare rooms with their students’ unions. Armed with thousands of leaflets, we targeted Dart stations, shopping streets, and Luas stops in a last-ditch effort to find our students somewhere to live during their studies. 

Digs, however, leave students with little-to-no protections, resulting in many college-goers thrown out at a moment’s notice — so why are students’ unions trying to promote such a precarious scheme? Frankly, for many students, it is digs or drop out. 

Decades of privatisation and exploitation of our housing market by successive governments have led to students being exploited by the rental market. Governments who have facilitated this failed experiment, for some reason, keep using the same measures and keep expecting different outcomes. 

A huge 83% of student accommodation in Dublin is privately owned, with 90% of that costing way over €10,000 for an academic year. 

This is not a system that has gotten out of hand, but instead, a perfect example of what happens when landlordism and capital gain are prioritised over all else. Just under 80 TDs and seanadóirí are landlords, participating in the system.

Jenny Maguire: 'Students are forced to commute for hours every day from across the country to get an education.'

The government has created winners and losers for almost everything in our society, and the majority of students are finding out they will never be winners. Our students’ unions are raising alarm bells every year, but nothing is changing and the most vulnerable are paying the price for it.

The issue is not just private accommodation, however. To no surprise, 90% of students at my university of Trinity College Dublin find the accommodation offered unaffordable (presumably the other 10% filled out their surveys from a golden bath filled with champagne). 

The price gap between university and privately-owned accommodation is closing, with the recently opened Printing House Square accommodation in Trinity putting students back over €10,000. This, however, is being incentivised by government policies. 

According to the Irish Universities Association, there is a gap of over €260m in funding for the sector, and the reality is that the bill is being passed right on to students. Places of learning are being forced into commercialisation and becoming businesses, and the welfare of students is being sacrificed to facilitate this. 

Our universities are no longer home to the brightest minds changing the world — they’re home to large real estate companies with an increasingly insignificant academic wing.

What do these issues mean for students? 

Homelessness. Dropping out. Mental health deterioration. In the University of Galway, 92 out of 300 students who deferred their studies did so because they had nowhere to live. Students are forced to commute for hours every day from across the country to get an education. 

It's important to note that students lose out on much more than academic achievement. The accommodation and cost-of-living crisis has created a tiered student experience. 

If you have to travel for hours, are reliant on a dysfunctional transport system, are working 20+ hours a week all while suffering from lack of academic and welfare support… how are you possibly meant to experience the so-called ‘best years of your life’?

College is not just about academics. It is about finding yourself. Learning who you are independent of the confines of secondary school and the family home. You’re supposed to experience new things and join clubs and societies. 

This student experience is increasingly the exception to the rule, leaving students divided along class lines across our apparently great higher level sector.

This is a status quo that I and students can not and will not accept. I will not accept students sleeping in cars. I will not accept vulture funds and neoliberal policies destroying this country.

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

We stand out and beg people to rent a room because we believe in a better option for students than suffering. This is a belief we must share for us all. We must all come together and reject the privatisation of all that was once good in this country. 

We must all come together and recognise that our enemy is not the refugee seeking a better life, it is the wealthy that gain from our suffering. Our struggle for an Ireland that works for us all may only come about when we stop fighting each other, and instead, reach out a hand and march as one.

And also just build some publicly owned purpose-built student accommodation, good god.

• Jenny Maguire is the president of TCDSU/AMLCT.