Dublin’s Totally Daft Prices.

In Blogby Rashers Tierney15 Comments

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The Union of Students In Ireland made a recent plea to homeowners to take in their members as boarders. All due to the accommodation crisis across the city. They even set up a dedicated website to advertise this new cohort of digs.

Maybe in indication of take up of the scheme, the site appears to be knocked off line at the moment. USI  is an organisation that looks to have turned a corner, shedding its previous image as an IBEC supporting monolith of rank reaction. Its social media feed over the past while has featured solidarity with Greyhound workers, officer board members speaking out for choice and Gaza and a national campaign that focuses on the worth of education to society rather than the market.

Older readers will remember the madcap dash to find accommodation after you got your offer, as the points race ended, the rush to find a roof began.  Dark days of hunting out shitty gaffs from the back of the Evening Herald,  long queues and late landlords and wasted phone credit.

It might come as a bit of a shock that students are reliving some of those dire days right now.   Laura Harmon, president of the organisation explained it well in a press release recently:

“The Union of Students in Ireland has begun a major push and information drive to encourage home-owners in Dublin to consider housing a student during term-time. The call out is necessary as the student population in Dublin faces a serious shortage of accommodation, with CAO offers and the subsequent start of the academic year just a few short weeks away. Speaking ahead of the first information drive in Dublin city centre.”

“This is an access-to-education issue. The cost of accommodation in and around Dublin has risen enormously, pricing many students out of the accommodation market. Many “buy-to-renters” have repurposed accommodation they had previously made available to students for wealthier renters. To compound this, the value of the student grant has fallen against inflation over a number of years. The end result will be students unhoused and dropping out. USI is calling for the government to form a task force on student accommodation – there needs to be a specific strategy on this serious and growing problem.”

One of our readers sent us this Daft link to illustrate how landlords are scalping students:

“Not sure how interested you are in this. The USI have made an urgent plea to landlords to rent to students. Seems landlords are willing,but for crazy prices, this rental is €900 a month per person in a sharing room (which is the average rent price for a 1 bed apartment in the city). But you know, it’s cool, breakfast and linen are provided….after 5 years of college I can tell you the average living expense is 80 euro a week, add that to a reasonable sharing twin room of €300p/m (based on daft average and €480 for a single room) this property works out at approx 250 euro more than the average for a twin room to rent plus living expenses (travel, bills, food, socialising). Even allowing for the expenses the landlord would face for 4 people (heat, water, waste, food) she is still making over €3000 a month for this 4 bed (outside the city centre) house. Outrageous. I hope it’s a piss take.”

So, what’s it like out their folks? Is this advert from Daft a realistic gauge of the situation for students? What parts of the city are worse? Is it a Dublin phenomenon?

Do let us know.

 

 

Comments

  1. Yes, they are the price of some of these student accommodations are similar to what some families pay on their mortgage. Banks aren’t lending to as many people as they used to which has increased demand for rented accommodation.

  2. Yes, and Maynooth is even fecking worse. Between the University, people commuting into Dubland and having HP and Intel a few miles away there is a massive shortage of housing for Students.

  3. sorry is that €220 for the whole room or €220 for one bunk bed?

  4. 220 a week between 4 people , plus electricity, heating , water, bins, transport and food… Minimum cost per person would be two hundred euros minimum… Very few part time jobs too.

  5. This can’t be real!? Charging Charging €250 a WEEK for students to SHARE rooms. Tough to afford that on a fulltime wage, never mind as a student. If it’s real it’s truly disgusting.

  6. This country is just full of greedy c*#%s and it will never get better!they should all be shot!

  7. After reading this article I can 100% inform you that it is true however it is not only happening in Dublin. I am a first year student in NUI Galway and I just started last week but it was very difficult to find accomodation however we eventually did. After CAO offers we came down to Galway to look at places we had already called and to find other places for viewings but it was crazy, we spent thirteen hours driving around and after looking at some dumps we had began to give up, we were so desperate for somewhere to live that my dad called us to say he found a place twenty minutes outside Galway and we immediately wanted to accept but of course we had to view it first. Arriving at our destination we were feeling very glum but for the first time that day the house was decent and the rooms were spacious, our rent is €95 a week but we knew we had to take it. Earlier that day we had been advised to start considering hostels to live in for a temporary amount of time this disgusted us, but there are students that had to do this. I think this has got way out of hand and it needs to be sorted because how can students succeed when they are homeless or worrying about their safety? Another issue we had when we came down here was many people were not willing to rent to first years and I found this very unjust.

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