Luxury Housing For Some, Couches for Others

As an FOI sourced by the College Tribune showed, UCD residences' occupancy rates have been static in the last few years. In an accommodation crisis it is no surprise that all available options are full and that new accommodation is being built across Dublin.

Developers can guarantee that their properties will be filled, even if rents rise. This is where one of the major problems with our accommodation crisis sits. Universities and companies can charge whatever they want and not suffer the consequences. Instead they will make money on the backs of a national crisis with government support as they are alleviating a great burden on the state.

Meanwhile students with less money are effectively forced away from accommodation and may end up sleeping on couches even if their family do manage to afford to send them to university with or without SUSI grants.

According to a report by city planner John O’Hara to the Dublin City Council roughly 80,000 students currently live in Dublin and the Dublin area is short 16,000–18,000 beds to accommodate these students. The number of students is set to rise and no doubt these new students will need beds. According to the report, in December 2016 there were just over 9,100 beds available in Dublin.

The report highlights that the building of 5,835 bed-spaces had been approved for construction but of these, at the time of the report, fewer than 500 had been built and just 1,749 were under construction.

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