Struggle due for students to find places to stay in Galway
Students have slept in cars
APPROXIMATELY 250 emails looking for accommodation were sent in one day to University of Galway following the announcement of last year's CAO offers.
The two universities in Galway are expecting a high number of enquiries again this month as third-level students and their families try to source places to rents.
Leaving Cert results are out on Friday week, August 21, with University of Galway and ATU Galway City set to offer around 6,000 places to first-year undergraduate students when the CAO offers go live on Wednesday, August 26.
Recent research by Switcher.ie found that the average accommodation cost for students in Galway city has now reached €598 a month, but securing a place to live in the city has become increasingly difficult for students in recent years.
Seán de Búrca, Student Union President at University of Galway, believes the issue is only getting worse, forcing students to undertake long commutes, sleep in their cars or live in unhygienic conditions.
“Our Welfare Officer had received around 250 emails in a day enquiring about accommodation last year and it’s expected to get worse this year,” Seán De Búrca told The Tuam Herald.
“Students are living in rooms that have mould all around and yet they feel lucky to at least have a roof on their heads. The situation has gone so bad that it’s difficult to believe how bad it is. Most people are aware of the crisis but not the scale of it."
Roughly 20,000 students, including almost 4,000 international students, attend University of Galway at any given time, yet the university has only 1,867 dedicated student accommodation units to offer.
“There are beds on campus, but they exist more to generate profit than helping the students,” commented de Búrca.
“With the average rent prices increasing tremendously in recent years, almost 32 to 47 per cent of a student’s expenses are being spent towards accommodation."
The Student Unions at University of Galway and ATU Galway City are planning to come together for sleep outs in September in Eyre Square as a form of protest to highlight the accommodation issue and urge the Government to bring in better policies address it.
“The current National Student Accommodation Strategy is abysmal. It’s like crossing fingers and hoping for the issues to solve themselves,” offered de Búrca.
Local homeowners are being urged by the Student Unions to come forward and offer a spare room in their house to a student while also benefitting from the Rent-a-Room Relief scheme, which allows homeowners to earn €14,000 a year tax free.
“We are expecting around 2,000 new students across our four campuses in Galway, and zero purpose built student accommodation to offer,” said Charlene Grehan, President of ATU Galway-Mayo Students' Union.
The ATU Student Union has launched a new website called ATU StudentPad to connect the students with homeowners in a trusted and accessible way. Up to 200 landlords have advertising a room since the website was launched this year.
“On this platform, we verify the information provided by the homeowners to make sure everything is legit, and the student is not walking into a scam," said Grehan.
“The response has been encouraging, and we are extremely grateful to the homeowners who have chosen to help students access education by opening up their homes."
Charlene Grehan also highlighted the increasing number of scams faced by students desperate to find housing every year.
She said that the deposit scam is another issue faced by students, particularly the international and first year students.
“They get so desperate that they are ready to take any chance at getting a place. Once the money is handed over, its really difficult to recover,” she added.