Sarah Hamill: Why Ireland’s housing crisis may force some students to put their education on hold

It would be wrong to think that, for students seeking accommodation, nothing has changed since last year. For one, the Government has shown itself capable of taking prompt and firm action with respect to student-specific accommodation. When several providers of such accommodation announced they would only provide 51-week leases, the Government acted to limit such leases to 41 weeks. Such a change matters a great deal for affected students.

Violations of the new 41-week rule will fall under the remit of the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB). The problem here is that the RTB often has a lengthy backlog of cases. At some point, the Government will need to consider how best to resource the board so that it can do its job properly. As helpful as it is for student-specific accommodation providers to be regulated, there is little point in regulation without adequate enforcement.

Moreover, the data suggests that at the end of last year there were almost 34,000 student-specific tenancies – here meaning individual rooms – for a student population which, in 2022/23, was over 250,000. In short, most students live in other types of accommodation and will be unaffected by the new legislation.

For students who cannot live at home, they must hunt for a room – even a shared room – within a reasonable radius or commute of their campus. A shortage of such rooms prompted multiple student unions to band together recently to launch a “digs drive”.

As vital as digs are for students, they remain relatively unregulated and informal. Such a situation is unlikely to change given that these rooms are in private citizens’ own homes. Any attempt at regulating digs would quickly run into property rights concerns.

The recently released report of the Housing Commission did not discuss digs, or student ­accommodation in any great depth. Nonetheless, the Housing Commission predicts that there will be ongoing growth in the need for student accommodation.

The Housing Commission also observes that student accommodation requirements will need to be met if our housing system is to be functional. After all, the issues with student accommodation are a symptom of the broader Irish housing crisis and solving that crisis will help students seeking accommodation.

Not surprisingly, the Housing Commission suggested that more supply would be the solution to the crisis in student accommodation. But we knew that already. More supply is, after all, the solution to the wider housing crisis. Or at least to the most immediate aspect of the housing crisis. Two questions flow from this: first, who, exactly, is going to deliver this extra supply? And, second, is there anything to be done, specifically for students, while we wait for more supply?

As to the first question, the Housing Commission suggested both public and private developers needed to build more. Yet the commission also noted that more supply is not just a straightforward matter of building more houses. Other considerations such as the supply of services, transport links and the appropriate mix of social and private housing complicate the supply question.

The second question is equally complicated. On the one hand, various planned legislative measures, notably the increased regulation of short-term lets, may free up some properties for longer-term accommodation.

Such an outcome should trickle down to ­students. Though given the sheer level of demand for rented accommodation, any increase in supply is quickly absorbed by those with deeper pockets than students.

On the other hand, we have arguably reached the limit of what more regulation can do for addressing the housing crisis. At least in the short term.

Thus, the question becomes whether university education will come under pressure to change to accommodate the student housing crisis? For example, students are increasingly requesting more flexibility, such as lecture recordings, so they may better balance their studies with jobs and commutes. But lecture recordings are not always possible or suitable.

As such, some students will face the choice of dropping out or pausing their education simply because they cannot find affordable housing. Others will endure lengthy commutes, or precarious and unaffordable housing, or both. All of which might be worth it if they knew their housing troubles would end when they graduate. Except that they can be fairly certain that, if they stay in Ireland after they graduate, their housing woes will continue.

After all, even some of their lecturers cannot find housing.

This article was first published by the Irish Independent. See the original article on the Irish Independent website here.