Stirling students are continuing to struggle to find accommodation for the semester as university occupancy levels sit at 99.2 per cent.
This comes after the university announced they would be increasing their accommodation prices from September 2023 by 9 per cent and Principal Sir Gerry McCormac took a £68,000 pay rise.
National Student Union (NUS) Scotland, has found that 52 per cent of students have skipped a meal because of lack of money.
Zöe Crosher, VP of Communities at the Students Union, provided information from surveys circulated to Stirling students last year.
The university accommodation survey got 82 responses.
Their findings were that 45 out of 82 students spend more than £400 a month on rent and only 38 per cent of respondents agreed that accommodation is affordable.
In addition, the survey found that 29 out of 82 respondents said they are left with less than £50 to live on after paying rent.
Finally, 19 per cent of students agreed that rent is their biggest financial challenge.
On the other hand, the private accommodation survey, which received 50 responses, found that 18 out of 50 students spend more than £400 a month on rent.
30 per cent of respondents don’t believe their accommodation is affordable, and 17 out of 50 students have between £100 and £200 left for the month after paying rent and bills.
Rent was 28 per cent of respondents’ biggest financial challenge.
Justine Pedussel is the Students’ Union Housing Officer.
In her own words, she views her job as having two roles: “On the one hand, I do some casework, where if a student has a housing-related issue, whether it’s because of accommodation, or in the private sector, they can come to me. And I advise them on what to do.
“The other half of what I do is a lot of campaign work. So, fighting for better housing conditions, rent decreases, and whatever else falls into that category.”
The university has increased its number of students since 2019 by 5,000.
However, there is no new housing. On the contrary, some buildings are being closed, like Muirhead.
When asked who she blames for the crisis students are going through, she says: “Honestly, I would say the university is responsible for it. In this case, there’s been an increase in population.
“That means that there is more demand, which means that prices will go up, and that people can’t afford their rent. And the university isn’t responding with the aid students need.”
Douglas Hay, 21, is a fourth-year student at the university.
He explains he applied for accommodation early April last year and he got rejected in early August. This left him with a month to find a flat to move into.
He said: “It was almost impossible. We went to about five viewings, but we were alongside as many as 10 other interested parties at each one.
“It made it incredibly disheartening to know that there was really no certainty in where I would be living for fourth year, as you can never simply choose to take the flat.”
He explains that, after a flat viewing, you have to submit a note of interest and then be picked by the landlord out of a group of as many as fifty other interested parties.
He now lives in private accommodation where he pays £185 more per month than he would have for the accommodation he applied for.
Lee Bowcock, 21, is another fourth-year student who has been struggling with finding accommodation since the last academic year.
He explains that after returning from a semester abroad in America around January, he couldn’t find anywhere to stay.
“My first issue was I had to find a flatmate first. I couldn’t afford a flat on my own and once I found one it took us another eight weeks to find a flat,” he said.
This time around, Bowcock started flat hunting in June. He couldn’t find a flat until October.
“It was hard to get a flat, there was nothing available, even when it was available, it went really quick,” he said.
“I also noticed there’s a lack of furnished flats in Stirling right now, which was a big issue.”
For the first half of the semester, Bowcock had to commute an hour and a half from home.
He resorted to couch-surfing at friends’ houses as the travelling started getting tiring and expensive.
“Mentally it was very hard,” he said. “It was hard to keep up with classes because I was constantly thinking about where I was going to stay that night and having to rely on other people and their schedules wasn’t great.
“I felt like I had to keep up with their social circle because I was living in their social area. This left me with no time for myself.”
He explains accommodation is too expensive on campus, so he wouldn’t have been able to afford it.
At the moment, Bowcock pays £550 a month for rent alone.
Eliot Wooding-Sherwin, 23, is a fourth-year law student. He and his partner are currently homeless as they cannot find a flat in Stirling.
As a result of this Eliot explains, his partner is now going to drop out of university: “I think if he were here then he would be going to his classes regularly and wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed and possibly not drop out.”
When asked about how his mental health has been affected by not being able to find a flat, he said:
“I’ve really noticed recently how reliant I am on my friends. Anytime that there’s any kind of conflict, I’m suddenly really stressed out because I am so reliant on those people to provide me with a place to live.”
Wooding-Sherwin started flat-hunting in early July.
“My mum even looked into potentially taking a bank loan out and buying a park home for me and my partner to live there,” he explains.
In a statement on the housing crisis, Stirling’s Solidarity Space says: “The education system is structured in the sense that it’s supposed to be a charity, but instead of functioning as a charity which kind of would put us as students and its staff members first, it runs as a business and each year they try to increase their profits, this is what has led Stirling to a housing crisis.”
University of Stirling and University of Stirling’s accommodation services were contacted for comment but have not replied.
Feature image credit: Pexels.com
Journalist
