In a bid to address the ongoing national housing crisis, a new report from the Oireachtas Housing and Homelessness Committee has made a number of important recommendations for resolving the ongoing accommodation crisis facing students, a worsening issue which has seen little action in recent years.
Among the wide-ranging recommendations to deal with national housing-related issues, the report includes recommendations from the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), including the creation of a Government Student Housing Strategy within 12 months that “sets out long-term solutions, goals and timelines” and the provision of funding for a Student Housing Officer. This officer would work with USI, help students find full-time accommodation, roommates or digs and conduct research on and investigate alternatives for student housing.
One of the “key proposals”, TD Colm Brophy, who sits on the committee, told The University Times, is to provide the necessary finance to institutions to allow them to build more accommodation to meet the demand from an ever-rising number of students.
USI also recommended the creation of a Student Housing Trust that would act, similar to DUWO in the Netherlands, as a corporation set up by USI to tackle the crisis and alleviate the pressured private rental market, as well as new legislation to remove barriers to the government and institutions in providing accommodation.
While the committee has no power to influence government policy, its wide-ranging recommendations may prove influential for the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Simon Coveney, who is currently drafting an accommodation action plan. Speaking to The University Times, USI’s Vice President for Campaigns, Daniel Waugh, who authored USI’s submission to the committee, stated: “The argument seems to be hitting home, which is great.”
While groups have been calling for action on the critical shortage of student accomodation for years, Waugh believes that this message is now being listened to due to the combination of renewed government focus on the issue of housing as well as USI’s new “solution-based campaign this year”.
Indeed, in his submission to the committee, Coveney made a point of referencing the importance of student accommodation to his long-term plan to solve the housing crisis. Describing the need for a “dramatic increase” in on-and near-campus accommodation, the Minister argued that the solution lies in “rapid-build technologies”, such as modular units. “Some of the solutions could be put in place much more quickly than conventional housing and could free up a significant number of places over a short space of time”, Coveney told the committee.
As a means to greater housing provision, this angle has been embraced by USI, with Waugh stating: “We’re saying that if you take students out of the private rental sector and put them into on-campus accommodation, what you’re doing then is freeing up the rental sector. That argument has been picked up.”
Speaking to The University Times, Bernard Durkan, a member of the committee and a Fine Gael TD, emphasised that the student housing shortage could not be treated as a separate issue from the wider crisis. “If we don’t provide student accommodation separately then it means that they have to occupy and be competing with the people who are on the local authority housing list, and those who require private sector accommodation”, he said.
This view is echoed by Maeve Regan, a managing solicitor at Mercy Law Resource Centre. Arguing in her submission for a constitutional right to housing, something which is echoed in the centre’s just-published annual report, Regan also welcomes any recommendations that might contribute to the shortage of housing. Speaking to The University Times she said: “The issue of the housing crisis comes down to a lack of supply, and there are different needs in different sectors of society for the kind of housing that is needed, and the student sector is a sector of itself in terms of what it needs, so yes, absolutely, every development that increases supply is welcome.”
While the report indicates progress, it does not, in itself, guarantee that steps will be taken to address the lack of student accommodation, an issue which looks set to grow as the student population grows – from 167,991 students in 2014 to an estimated 192,886 students in 2020, according to the Higher Education Authority. In an underfunded higher education system too, it is unlikely that any institution will themselves be able to address the issue by building or procuring new accommodation for its students.
Brophy proposes a solution to this problem, suggesting that a “finance vehicle like the Housing Finance Agency” should be used to provide the necessary funding to universities to build accommodation.
However, speaking to The University Times, Ronan Lyons, an assistant professor in Trinity’s economics department and an expert on housing policy, expressed concern that despite the early enthusiasm from the minister, the long-term solutions required to solve the crisis are not conducive to a government whose life expectancy is considerably shorter. “The problem is that the government has a 12 to 18 month horizon, so a lot of these solutions in housing are going to take far longer than that, they’re three to five year solutions, and there’s going to be limited appetite for timeframe if it’s all up in the air in 12 or 18 months”, he said.
While praising the motivations behind the report, Lyons was more critical of the content: “My reading of the report is that it has sort of fallen victim to what a lot of these reports do, which is that they’re big on promises but they’re often short on detail about how.”
According to Lyons, the main problem facing the housing market in Ireland are the high construction costs. “If we don’t solve that, you’re not going to have anyone, whether they’re local authorities, universities or private developers, building student accommodation”, he said.
The report notes the need for a solution, however, stating that “there can no return to the past where the [private rented sector] was regarded as a short-term housing option for students” and that “students completing their studies are of paramount importance to the competitiveness of the country”. USI’s own submission to the committee calls for urgent action, as the lack of accommodation “continues to fuel a dropout culture in third level education yet education is widely recognised as a key factor in social and economic wellbeing in Ireland”.
Waugh stated that these recommendations, which would see the government actively involve USI in working towards a solution, are achievable: “A student housing strategy is not that difficult to put together by us. To give us funding for a student housing officer isn’t out of reach, or the idea to set up a student housing trust. The recommendations very much take the work out of their hands, giving us more power to do it for them. It’s something that they perceive as alleviating pressure from them a bit more. It’s way for us to address the issue head on, as opposed to them trying to do it.”
“What we’re going to do now, over the summer and the next couple of months, is make sure that those recommendations are fulfilled”, he added.
