DkIT students face rent crisis
STUDENTS coming to Dundalk Institute of Technology are facing an accommodation crisis as landlords are renting more and more properties to employees at multinational companies.
And in a bid to alleviate the problems faced by students who want to live in Dundalk, the college’s students’ union have asked those with spare rooms to consider renting to students.
In addition, the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) are to flyer 100,000 homes across Ireland, including in Dundalk, in an effort to secure accommodation for as many students as possible.
DkITSU vice president Paddy Duffy told the Argus that advertisements placed in the local media had yielded a lot of inquiries from people around Dundalk who have spare rooms to rent.
He said: ‘ The provision of digs have been a lot better since we put out the word, but we need to get the forms we’ve sent out back to ensure that places are ready for the start of the academic year.
‘However, the availability of rented houses has been really poor; we are down a lot of houses this year, though, as I say, digs are starting to make a come back’.
Mr Duffy said that over the course of his own five years at the Dundalk IT, ‘ the availability of accommodation for students has been getting worse and worse’.
He said: ‘ There used to be a lot on offer but the increase in the numbers of people coming to Dundalk for work, especially for the multinationals, is taking accommodation options away from students’.
USI President, Annie Hoey, told the Argus that she was aware of PayPal and eBay professionals coming to Dundalk and eating into the already squeezed rental market.
She said the same type of issue had arisen in Maynooth, which, along with Dundalk, had been included in the government’s plan for student accommodation, announced earlier this summer as part of the housing strategy.
And she said that while the long term solution is the construction of student-specific accommodation, but more rented rooms could help in the short term.
In addition, there is a severe shortage of purpose-built student properties, with around 200 rooms in Dundalk.
Mr Duffy said there was a lot of benefits to renting to DkIT students, not least the ability to earn up to €12,000 a year in rent tax free.
He said students living in digs were ‘respectful because it is a family home’ and it is ‘good for people who may live on their own or who have grown-up children who live away to know there is someone else in the house’.
Mr Duffy added: ‘ The best bit is that you get to chose who you want to live with you while earning money from the extra space in your home’. He urged anyone who has a registration form to return it as soon as possible.
For more information on the process and to request a registration form, contact Paddy Duffy at 042 9370393 or 085 2781451 or email: vicepresident@dkitsu.ie.