Landlords reneging on students and opting for highest bidder instead
STUDENTS desperately seeking accommodation are being left high and dry, with many believing they secured a room only to discover they have been gazumped by others offering to pay higher rents.
The news comes as student leaders said college-goers are suffering from a lack of regulation and ‘four years of Government inaction’ around digs accommodation.
They said many new and returning students have found themselves back at square one this week, after their expected accommodation arrangements fell through.
Izzy Tiernan, student welfare and equality officer at University of Galway (formerly NUIG), said the informal nature of digs is a ‘major issue that I have been seeing quite a lot, especially this week’.
She told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘Students are arriving to their digs and either not getting on with the landlord or they’re not seeing any type of agreements before they arrive and the landlord is either acting badly towards the student, abusing the student’s rights and in some cases harassing them.’
Homeowners – and even renters – can rent out a spare room tax-free for up to €14,000 a year. Many hosts do not allow the tenant to stay at weekends and only allow them to access certain parts of the house.
Ms Tiernan said there is a trend of hosts wanting to ‘make as much money as possible off students while causing as little hassle to their own life as they can’. She added: ‘What we’re seeing is landlords not allowing students to use facilities in the house at certain hours of the day or certain times, not being willing to work with the students in making the accommodation appropriate for the student’s needs and just throwing in the towel straight away and saying, “this isn’t going to work”.
‘Landlords need to make their money to keep themselves afloat but, from my own perspective of how students are being treated, it is quite dire and lacks a certain level of humanity.’ UCD Student Union president Martha Ní Riada also said she is aware of cases where students had a verbal agreement with landlords in June or July and were hoping for goodwill.
But she added: ‘Now the landlord is ignoring all their messages.’
TU Dublin students’ union president Brian Jordan said he is aware of cases where students in digs have been told to leave ‘on the spot’ after being accused of ‘something small like using the host’s shower’.
He told the MoS: ‘There’s no way to prove it and they don’t have to prove it. They can just kick them out because there’s absolutely no legislation whatsoever.
‘There’s no contract. RTB [Residential Tenancies Board] can’t get involved. Threshold [homeless charity] can’t help.’
Mr Jordan said he is aware of students paying €800 a month to rent a room from Monday to Friday.
He added: ‘They have no choice, because they can’t afford the really high quality but extortionate [purpose-built] student accommodation for around €1,100 a month.’
The graduate said the situation ‘ultimately comes down to Government inaction’. He added: ‘There are constant requests and demands from the National Union of Students for digs legislation. What they do is just create guidelines and guidelines can be ignored.
‘It comes down to four years of Government inaction, despite promising anything and everything to do with making accommodation safer and better for students.’
This week students from Trinity College Dublin blocked access to the Book of Kells in order to protest against the rise in the cost of on-campus accommodation. Trinity
‘It is quite dire and lacks a level of humanity’
‘It comes down to four years of inaction’
has raised the price of on-campus accommodation by 2%, the maximum amount permitted under Rent Pressure Zone legislation.
TCD Student Union president László Molnárfi, 22, said: ‘It’s pricing students out of education. The college look at us like cash cows.’
A spokesman for Higher Education Minister Simon Harris said: ‘The Department plans to make guidance and sample license agreements available to aid students and homeowners in undertaking ‘digs’ accommodation.’