‘I may have to quit my course because I can’t find anywhere to live’
AN AMERICAN student at University College Dublin says she may have to abandon the final year of her course because of the accommodation crisis.
Sayre DeBruler, 20, from Chicago, Illinois, is due to return to Dublin for the new college term next month.
But after spending months searching in vain for affordable accommodation in an ‘impossible’ rental market, the student of English and Drama now fears she will not be able to continue her studies.
She told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘I searched on Daft.ie and other housing websites, but most of the affordable places I could find were either five-day weeks, which I cannot do because I’m international, or were an hour or more bus ride from campus and I get severely car sick after half an hour on a bus.
‘I stumbled upon an advert a few weeks ago on Facebook that seemed reasonable but after further discussion it appeared more and more like a scam.
‘Even though my budget is higher than most of my friends’ – theirs being €650 to €750 and mine being around €1,000 – I’m unable to find affordable housing near campus.’
Ms DeBruler got her offer to study at UCD in 2020 and stayed in on-campus accommodation for her first two years.
She claims she was told by the college that, as an international student, she would always be provided with on-campus accommodation. But in May she was dismayed to discover that all rooms on campus for the year ahead were already booked.
She told the MoS: ‘By the time I learned I wasn’t getting oncampus housing, all of the student accommodation off campus was fully booked.
‘[The cost of] housing in Dublin is unreasonably high, and the fact that some kids are paying their own way through college simply means they will not have the funds to pay €1,500 a month for a studio apartment.’