Our aims

1.Poor quality

Summary

• Students often live in and put up with poor living conditions. The top 5 most common problems include:

1. Unsafe and/or outdated appliances.
2. Poorly maintained property i.e mould on the walls, dirty carpets, peeling paint.
3. Overcrowded: living space converted and bedrooms sliced in half to cram in more students.
4. Broken elements and long waits for a fix. i.e broken boiler (no hot water and heating) broken appliances. 1/3 issues take longer then 1 week to be resolved.
5. Conflict with letting agents and landlords. For example, who should maintain the garden?, landlords claiming students deposits to fix non-existent issues or issues that already existed at the start of the tenancy. Hidden charges and letting agent fees.

• Landlords and letting agents often have no incentive to fix these issues (maximum profit for minimum effort). Students are often reluctant to challenge these issues as they are usually living on precarious short term contracts and will move on at the end of the year. Landlords and letting agents often take a long time to reply to messages, don’t fix issues and or threaten to leave bad references and take students’ deposits when they report issues.

• Students pay on average £126/week to rent and should expect much better quality for this price i.e bigger living spaces, NO or minimal issues with their accommodation, quick fixes . These problems can often affect students’ physical and mental health. 

The detail

As a student or even a renter in general have you ever had an issue with your accommodation? Broken and/or outdated appliances, mould on the walls, overgrown gardens, dirty carpets, peeling paint and sometimes downright dangerous living conditions. The list could go on but I’m sure most people will be able to relate to at least one if not more of the above problems.

Conditions like this are expected to crop up in any accommodation situation from time to time but the issue in this country and in particular, in the student rental market, is that these issues often appear a lot more often than they should. There are far too many stories of renters being let down by their landlords and letting agents. For example, students in Brighton recently fought a case against an estate agent where they were threatened with a bad reference for reporting an oven that would catch fire upon use. Obviosity this is unacceptable but all too often this is the normal service received from slum landlords and dodgy letting agents across the country. 

For students, these issues happen even more frequently and almost every student we have spoken too has experienced at least one of these during the course of their study. What’s more, landlords and letting agents are often very reluctant or even totally against doing anything about it. In fact, more than 1/3 of the reported issues are not solved within a week and that’s without including all of the unreported issues that students simply put up with as a fact of life.

After all, what incentive to landlords and letting agents have to upgrade and fix student accommodation in a timely and efficient manner? On average they can charge £126/week for these conditions and just wait for students to live out their precarious 1 year contract before moving them on and then ushering in next years victims.

Because of this, students are often reluctant and unwilling to challenge landlords and letting agents whilst demanding better living conditions. If your contract requires you to move on at the end of the year, it is often not worth standing up to mistreatment especially as you sometimes won’t even get a reply or worse, threatened worth a bad reference and even eviction!  In reality, for £126/week students should expect much better living conditions which could include, bigger living spaces, modern kitchens, maintained gardens and minimal issues that are fixed in a timely fashion.

Poor quality housing can also affect students physical and mental health.  Broken appliances and mould on the walls for example, can cause respiratory problems and issues that prevent students from accessing hot water and showers that are essential for people with joint problems including arthritis. Mentally, it can be difficult for people to adapt to student life whilst dealing with the stress of university. Other life issues such as discovering their place in the world and dealing with their sexuality and gender identity can be pushed aside when their safe space that should include their accommodation isn’t up to standard. Furthermore, it is unfair to expect students to continually pester and repeat message their landlord and/or letting agent to get basic problems fixed, particularly when they should be focusing on their studies and striking a good work/life balance.

2.Precarious contratcs

Summary

• Students often sign precarious 1 year contracts with no long term sustainability. This leaves students with no accommodation stability and little choice but to move into new accommodation year on year.

• Landlords are free to evict students, raise rents and abuse precarious contract situations each year. This makes it much easier for landlords and letting agents to exploit students and use their insecure situations against them.  

• Precarious contracts lead to poor quality, expensive and environmentally unsustainable accommodation. Students are reluctant to challenge landlords and demand change to their accommodation as they move on frequently. Landlords have no incentive to improve conditions as it makes most financial sense to keep the status quo and leave houses in poor condition for longer. Lastly, students have no long term stability in which to create a sustainable lifestyle encompassing many aspects of sustainability.

The detail

A common experience for many students is to live in private rented accommodation (from landlords or letting agents) – 54% of UK students as of 2019. A further 9% live in private rented halls. This clearly puts huge demands on the private sector to supply accommodation for students but also makes its a lucrative business venture. This means that university towns often have a unique supply and demand cycle whereby a large proportion of the housing ‘stock’ in the local area is taken up by students. Over time this has become more prevalent as higher education has become marketised and more and more people choose or are advised to go to university.  According to a student accommodation briefing paper for the house of commons, a report by Higher Education Policy Institute, HEPI titled ‘somewhere to live’ says that the current system of student accommodation is ‘not working as well as it should’. The report cites some areas saturated with unfinished developments and others with not enough rooms. In fact, most universities do not have enough places in managed accommodation to house all students and most have to prioritise housing first year students. 

This unique supply and demand feature leads to a short term cycle of precarious and often expensive, poor value accommodation which is covered below. Universities are under pressure to supply new rooms to first year students every year and landlords and letting agents buy up housing stock to cram full with each years crop of university students. University towns are often hit hard by this with local residents sometimes reporting noisy students, family homes eaten up by letting agents and landlords (some of whom live hundreds of miles away) and local area becoming ‘ghost towns’ at certain times of the year e.g christmas and summer holidays. The FAQ for the house of commons suggests that the problems with the student housing market are not caused by a lack of housing but by a lack of affordable accommodation. I would somewhat agree, the figures show that there is a chronic lack of housing in this country in general, in particular, affordable, green, social housing. In fact, housebuilding is at its lowest for over 30 years. This means that the above problems exemplify a lack of housing in general which might not be prevalent if one were to solely focus on the figures for student housing. Therefore, whilst the student market might be dominated by slum landlords and letting agents, they are taking up the scarce existing housing stock creating a false sense of housing supply.  

With regards to the stability of this student housing monopoly in university towns, most students will sign up to precarious 1 year contracts with no option but to move on year or year if they fail or can’t extend their current contract. Landlords and letting agents know this. Students are more likely to have accommodation issues for example with rent or dropping their course/moving universities etc. Thus, the priority for the letting agents and landlords is to mitigate this risk rather then eliminating it by providing long term stability and flexibility as this could cause them profit loss. For example if they are locked into multi year contracts with fixed rent with no option for rent increases or if they can’t charge new students hidden fees or agents fees and don’t have the flexibility to evict students when they become ‘unprofitable’. This means that short term inflexible contracts are the preferred option and students are trapped in a yearly renting cycle. 

What this means is, Landlords and letting agents are handed all of the power in the student rental market. Not only do they own and control the majority of the land and property but they also control the contractual terms of use of these and can dictate the conditions of students existence in university accommodation. Common examples include clauses allowing landlords to steal deposits and even evict students from a property for any number of reasons. 

3.Expensive and poor value for money 

Summary

• Students accommodation is often poor value for money and on average students in the UK pay £126/week for their accommodation and £150/week in the South East – landlords and letting agents can charge high prices because a lack of quality available housing stock leaves students with little alternative. Universities have the same issue and often have a short supply of on campus accommodation meaning that they have to prioritise first year students at best and turn away prospective students at worst. 

• Poor quality housing means that these expensive prices don’t offer good value for money – Many student houses share a lot of the ‘poor quality’ issues talked about in the above section. This means that at best some students are living in broken housing and at worst housing that severely affects their physical and mental health. This should be unacceptable by anyone’s standards. Poor value for students = good value for landlords and letting agents. 

• Profits are not reinvested into the house – Landlords and letting agents exist to make profit from housing. In the student housing market there is little incentive for Landlords and letting agents to upgrade/retrofit houses and reinvest any of THEIR profit back into the house. This means students often have no energy saving improvements no modern appliances and much more.

• Private developers and universities often gentrify student housing raising prices and  leaving low income students in tough situations – In many university towns, private developers, landlords and letting agents buy up affordable housing stock in large quantities and charge mark up prices. This leads to ‘gentrification’ i.e removal of affordability and influx of wealthy or expensive services. This also removes existing housing stock that is needed by low income and/or disadvantaged people in the local area. 

4.

Summary

• Students often have no say on the contents of their tenancy agreement – missing out on the option to own pets, manage their house and at worse, placed in constant fear of eviction – Landlords and letting agents often include nasty surprises in tenancy agreements for students. Hidden fees and the power to evict people without prior reason or warning are just a few of the terrible examples that we have heard. Moreover, many students miss out on many opportunities such as the ability to own pets and manage their house for example, fixing things quickly without having to go through a ‘middleperson’ such as a landlord. 

5.

Summary

• Housing stock in the UK contributes to a