Conversation Starter

at

Trinity College Dublin

This afternoon.

Sinn Féin’s Eoin Ó Bróin released the following statement:

“I have written to the Presidents of University College Dublin, Dublin City University, NUI Galway, NUI Maynooth, Limerick University, Trinity College Dublin and University College Cork requesting a meeting to discuss plans to increase on-campus student accommodation charges by up to 4% per year.

“Sinn Féin and other opposition parties worked hard to force a change in the legislation to ensure that on-campus student accommodation was included in the rent pressure zone legislation. This made it illegal for on-campus student accommodation providers to increase rents by more than the 4% cap.

“While the universities are adhering to the letter of the law they are not recognising the spirit of the law.

“Rising student accommodation costs are placing a huge financial burden on lower and middle income students and their families.

“Most students cannot afford any more rental increases and should not be priced out of the university of their choice due to accommodation costs.

We need to start a conversation about how on-campus student accommodation is financed and what can be done to lower the costs so that universities can provide affordable, good quality accommodation.

“I am keen to meet the head of these universities as a matter for urgency to ensure that students have access to good quality accommodation.

“I have also written to student union representatives seeking a meeting to discuss their concerns about this latest flurry of rent rises.”

In fairness.

Meanwhile…

Eoin Ó Broin seeks meeting with Universities on rising student accommodation costs (Sinn Féin)

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10 thoughts on “Conversation Starter

  1. Jake38

    When you tell landlords they cannot raise rents by more than 4% annually, what do you expect will happen?

    1. Dr.Fart

      i know where you’re going.. but people who put forth this argument seem to think the house just dissappears if a Landlord doesn’t want to rent it out anymore because he or she isn’t allowed charge insane rates anymore. (even though 4% becomes 8% the next year, 12% after that, and so on) Usually the people putting forward your argument are landlords who are annoyed they can’t rip people off as hard as they’d like to. So.. tiny violins and all that.

      1. Conksi

        Back to school for you: rhetorical questions, compound interest and, supply and demand.

        The question should be why are Univerisities behaving more like private landlords when they should be supporting students and their academic supports? And perhaps is there a % of student accoms for Irish, Eu and finally foreign students? Foreign students tend to be minted
        You can understand it to some degree since market rates for all the new student accomodations acros dublin is massive, and they’re plush places that JP Dunleavy would never recognise.

        1. Cian

          A university is like a business – they need to raise money. If they can’t raise it through accommodation rents they will increase the fees (or reduce services).

          The option is that government can increase their funding. But then the government has less money to spend on stuff…. like social housing.

      1. Cian

        In an environment with no restrictions on rent a landlord would set the rent at, say, 1000.

        The following year, if they have good tenants they may choose to leave the rent at 1000… this may continue for a 4 years until the tenants leave. The landlord, with new “unknown” tenants, could then choose to reset the rent to the current levels (say 1150). The landlord has flexibility to ‘reward’ an existing tenant by keeping the rent low.

        If you have a rent cap of 4% per year this isn’t possible, If a landlord doesn’t increase the rent one year they can never “recoup” that increase. This puts pressure on the landlord to increase rent each year.

  2. Dr.Fart

    i’d love if he was housing minister. he has an actual thirst for it, along with the knowledge. you’d never catch murphy doing anything like this. useless backstard.

    1. 01101101 01100011

      Hi Fart

      I’d suggest there’s a very good chance the current housing minister is off on a wee hollier somewhere nice whilst EO’B is busily getting stuck in (despite not even having the job THIS kind of vocational approach definitely impresses me) or perhaps he’s just too busy urgently solving the housing emergency, what do you think?

      1. Dr.Fart

        Hi loads of zero’s and ones.

        I defo do not think Murphy is busy solving anything, least of all the housing crisis. the wee holiday could be spot on. although it seems like a home away from home, as hes been on holidays for years OH, ZING!

  3. Salmon Eile

    How about our overseas students in Ireland and their exposure to CoronaVirus/COVID19?

    Wouldn’t student accommodation be a prime incubator?

    And, how’s COVID19 going to impact the shopping for handbags in Brown Thomas? Could there be an economic recession as Chinese people stay away?

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