Solving The Student Homelessness Crisis: The Case For Co-Op Housing
In recent weeks in the media there has been increasing talk about student homelessness, but there have been comparatively few references to student homes. The vocabulary used to discuss where students live during their studies, "accommodation", does not suggest any form of house, home, or security — though often framed as assistance, it more often conjures thoughts of impermanence, exploitation, and greed. Many students, including those who have term accommodation, are already homeless. Over 80% of Maynooth students commute, and according to the university's own numbers, over 30% spend more than 2 hours each day commuting. Regular buses come from Gorey in County Wexford which is almost a 4 hour round trip. For students engaging in a daily commute like this, they essentially have no home life. They're forced to wake early in the morning and don't get back until late at night, at which point they have just enough time to have their eight hours sleep before having to do it all over again. Maynooth Student pad, a service the university offers to landlords looking to advertise rooms to students, primarily shows digs-style, owner-occupied accommodation which affords students no rights as tenants and in many cases forces students to travel back home on weekends. Can such accommodation really be considered a home?
The current planning for student specific housing in Maynooth.
Many of the issues outlined above stem from one root cause: a lack of supply. If we assume that every student who spends over 2 hours a day commuting would benefit from a bed in Maynooth, then there is a shortfall of approximately 5000 beds Maynooth. Surely the solution then is to build more housing? There are currently 3 projects in the planning proposal stages that will aim to increase the number of student beds in the town. The first is proposed by CAIRN homes, a private developer responsible for much of the development at Mariavilla. Their proposed development directly opposite the Moyglare gate to campus seeks to provide 260 student-specific bed spaces along with 158 residential apartments of varying sizes (Planning Ref 22314337). Two further developments have been proposed by the university. The first is at Buckley House (Planning Ref 22953) which aims to provide 116 student beds. Partial funding for this was secured late last year as part of Simon Harris’s initiative to curb the student housing crisis. The second plan is at a much earlier stage with the university recently tendering for a site to provide 500 student bed spaces in the next 3 years.
All together the 3 proposed developments would deliver just under 900 student-specific beds to the town. However, there are concerns associated with each of the proposed developments. The Maynooth Community Council submitted a letter of objection to An Bord Pleanála citing concerns about both the supply and affordability. The student beds would likely be let out at a similar price to equivalent types of accommodation in Dublin. Aparto is one of the city’s biggest providers and the cheapest room they offer is €272 per week. Moreover, the proposed accommodation would likely be subject to yearly rent hikes of the maximum legally permissible increase of 2%. Meanwhile, the university developments will most likely fall under their current housing model, which is also set to increase rents on campus by the legal maximum. Such arrangements do not offer students security of tenure, forcing them to reapply each year with no guarantee of housing. The planning documents outline that the Buckley House development will be leased out as holiday lets during the summer, revealing profit as the primary motivator for the development, not student homes. This will provide no security for students, most of whom will have to leave for the summer, which will inevitably have a damaging effect on the social fabric of the community in Maynooth.
Publicly funded? Publicly owned!
Despite the partial funding being awarded by the state to the Buckley House scheme, it’s likely we will see the university opting for a public-private partnership model to deliver the scheme. Public-private partnerships, commonly referred to as PPPs, are partnership arrangements between the state bodies in the public sector and private corporations. They are commonly used to deliver large public infrastructure projects and are partly or fully funded by private capital in exchange for a limited period of ownership whereby the private firm gets to reap the profits from the assets created. Since the 2008 financial crisis, the Irish state has increasingly been entering PPPs to deliver public services including social housing. The benefits of this to the state is that the private partner must take on a considerable portion of the risk involved in the development. In practice however, projects delivered through PPP tend to be more expensive in the long run. Significant questions have been raised regarding transparency, accountability, and value for money that PPPs offer. For student housing delivered through PPP, the educational institution must relinquish control over the management of the asset, meaning they would have no control over the rent. As such, a cost rental model would be out of the question.
This all begs the question: if public money is financing construction, how come the project is not publicly owned? If the student accommodation was publicly owned, then the university would be able to adopt a policy of cost rental that would see rents covering no more than the cost of construction, management, and maintenance of the housing units. Such a policy would significantly reduce rents for on-campus housing. That said, such a policy would have no effect on the market rate in the town. The only way to achieve this would be to dramatically increase supply, to build publicly owned accommodation, and to immediately halt the growth of the student population until this is achieved.
Owned by students, operated on a democratic basis.
With all of this in mind, what are some of the possible remedies for this? Co-operative housing is one potential solution. A co-operative is an autonomous, member-led enterprise that seeks to unite individuals in working towards a common social, cultural, or economic goal through collective ownership and democratic leadership. Ireland has a rich history of co-operative enterprises from agricultural and dairy co-ops to credit unions. Housing co-operatives have been popping up across Europe in recent decades in response to rents in cities spiralling out of control. Housing co-ops have time and time again been proven to reduce rents, increase living standards, and foster community growth. In Scotland, in response to the student housing crisis in Edinburgh, the Edinburgh Student Housing Coop (ESHC) was established in 2014. As it was democratically run and operated on a cost rental model, they were soon able offer a housing solution for 106 students at the cheapest rate in the city.
Being a member of a coop does come with some caveats. While it can offer cheaper rents and a more secure tenancy, there are some responsibilities that coop members must engage with. In order to keep the costs low, ESHC members must do much of their own maintenance on the property. While this may seem like a drawback, the flipside is they have full autonomy over what they can do in the property. That freedom contrasts with the oppressively long license agreements that students in Maynooth are forced to sign in the current university-operated student housing.
Freedom and responsibility are the seeds of a thriving community. A sense of ownership has often been cited as a critical element in community development, and that’s the exact thing that the student community in Maynooth lacks. With so many commuters, and with the majority of those in accommodation paying exploitative and extortionate rents with no security, it's no wonder the divide between the permanent population and the 15,000-strong student population of Maynooth is worsening every year. The solution to both problems is the same: more student accommodation that is cheap and affordable and, more importantly, that offers students a sense of ownership in our community. The co-operative model has the capacity to achieve that.
How do we get there?
The final question then is how do we get there? The first step is unionisation. As individuals, we are powerless and beholden to the structures and institutions that have power over us. However, when standing together we have the power to evoke change. As we saw with the #WheresMyLevy campaign, collective action can and does lead to change. After holding one of the largest student protests in recent Irish history, we the students managed to strongarm the university into recommitting to the student centre project as well as giving the union executive joint oversight over the levy fund. To some, this might not seem too radical, however this was but the first step in a much broader student movement that we the students can and must mount to seek housing justice.
Other than the Students' Union, we can join a local community union. CATU, which stands for Community Action Tenants Union, is a union for Communities and Tenants that seeks to protect and further the rights of its members through direct action. Even if you are not a tenant and still living at home, CATU, with around 2000 members across the 32 counties, is mounting a campaign for housing justice. Under the union structure, members pay monthly dues to the union, with most opting to pay about one hour’s wages a month. Additionally, members give their time over to attending monthly branch meetings and participating in actions such as pickets, demonstrations, and protests. Finally, we can support national movements such as the Cost of Living Coalition and Raise the Roof that opposing the lifting of the winter eviction ban which has thrust thousands of tenants, including students, into further housing precarity.
