On a busy summer morning, Dublin commuters were being approached by eager students’ union officers in a “last-ditch effort to get some rooms” for incoming college goers.
“We have people who sleep in cars and serial couch surfers,” said University College Dublin (UCD) students’ union president Michael Roche, who was on the canvass at St Stephen’s Green. –
In recent weeks, he said, there has been an influx of queries from concerned students and parents about housing for the year ahead.
“For international students and first years who are quite new to Dublin’s rental market, there can also be exploitative situations or scams where people just don’t have the knowledge of the market that returning students do,” Mr Roche said.
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Recent figures showed UCD has the State’s most expensive on-campus rooms. Mr Roche said that situation has left “a lot of people locked out” in their search for accommodation.
An en-suite room in village three on the college’s Belfield campus costs €11,888 for the academic year. The cheapest on-campus option at UCD is a shared bedroom in village one at €5,722.
UCD students’ union has joined forces with the Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art Design and Technology (IADT) for a digs drive aimed at addressing the “chronic shortage of rental accommodation” in the capital.
[ Where will vital student housing come from?Opens in new window ]
Commuters passing St Stephen’s Green Luas station from 7am on Tuesday were handed flyers encouraging them to avail of the Revenue Commissioners’ rent-a-room relief scheme that allows homeowners earn up to €14,000 tax-free for letting out a spare room in their home.
The student representatives were due to gather again on Tuesday evening at bus and Luas stops around the city to push their appeal.
UCD students’ union campaign and engagement officer Hazen E Griffin has experience of the challenges of finding accommodation as an international student in Dublin.
Arriving from the US, Mr Griffin said he was shocked at the housing crisis in Ireland and spent the summer couch-surfing while struggling to find a place to live for the upcoming academic year. It had taken a “serious” toll on his mental health, he said.
“This is the experience of countless students,” Mr Griffin said. “This is a last-ditch effort to get some rooms for students who are coming in the next two weeks to study at Irish universities.”
Welfare officer Emilia O’Hagan, from Co Down, lived and worked “upwards of 50 hours a week” in a Dublin boarding school during second year when no other accommodation options were available.
“Looking back, that was a really messed up situation for someone in their second year of college,” she said.
“I was only 19 and basically mothering over 30 children. I was on call all night ... any social life was out the window.”
The digs drive “is quite personal to me”, she said, describing how she failed exams due to the demands of her work and living arrangement.
Shreyansh Jagtap from Mumbai, India, said living in digs has positively transformed his college experience.
Mr Jagtap lives with a family in Ongar, west Dublin, who have rented a room to him for €600 a month for the last year.
“They have kids, so it’s like a family for me here. It’s giving mental support plus a good space,” he said. One “perk” of the digs arrangement, he said, has been the home-cooked meals included in the rent.
Now the students’ union’s graduate officer, Mr Jagtap said he has seen how renting in Dublin was “10 times harder” than in Mumbai. “Mumbai is also expensive, but not this much,” he said.
