My son has applied for comp sci starting 2023. He's a Scottish student and obviously hasn't heard back yet.
However, I thought you may all wish to be made aware of accommodation crisis going forward.
I have recently contacted the CASH campaign (campaign for affordable student housing) and I am copying their worrying response below:
I’m sorry to say but I don’t believe the situation will have improved by much of a margin by that point. I’ll explain why.
We had a meeting with members of the Principal’s Office yesterday and the University it seems is not willing to take enough action on the crisis.
We found out in the last days that the University has actually increased student numbers again, despite the worsening crisis and no legal mandate this year to take on the oversubscribed students from the Higher grades crisis. Add onto this that unless the private housing market suddenly turns around and properties are returned to students from the holiday-let market, the University has already acquired pretty much as many rooms outside of St. Andrews as they possibly can and halls of residence are at capacity. We already had the highest number of rejected halls bedroom applications in the history of the University last year (1000, 10% of the entire student population). With an increase in numbers again, this is going to increase even more. That spillover will enter the private market and push up demand (and rent) even further.
The HMO ban (which restricts homes of multiple occupancy and was intended so local families would have access to housing in town) might open up some spare ‘locked’ bedrooms, but from our research, most students have responded to the ban by illegally letting out spare bedrooms to friends to reduce the rent. Even if we get a temporary revision of the ban, I can’t see it making a profound enough impact to reduce the housing challenges we’re seeing.
New student accommodation won’t be built until at least 2026, and the situation is worsened by Dundee. Hundreds of students were located there this year, and many went to the private market. The semester of St. Andrews starts some weeks before Dundee Uni, and so students had a first pick of properties there as they began panic searching a few weeks earlier. Dundee uni students are now living in hostels and airbnb’s as there is no homes left in the city. The issue I see here is St. Andrews students are mostly international and leave their property during summer to go home, this is far more uncommon at dundee university. Therefore we might be about to see a situation where dundee students keep a hold of their lease, or take on St. A student properties when they leave in anticipation of not securing a home for next year. And so many more St. Andrews students might be looking even more desperately for a home, on top of the increase in student numbers, which will only drive increased rents again and it will be even more difficult to find someplace.
Unless your son is from a disadvantaged background and is low income, there’s very little likelihood that he will secure a place in halls of residence for his second year and he will be forced to enter the private market.
It’s confounded by the fact that St. Andrews house prices have increased 31% in just the last year, with many going to the buy-to-let and holiday-let market. With such increases, rent will go up too so landlords can maintain their yields.
The one positive is the recently introduced short-term let legislation, which might restrict those property owners and those homes might return to the rental market. But we’re already at a point where St. Andrews is one of the most expensive places in the UK to be a student, and I can’t see that changing any time soon. Any profound change is going to take several years, and probably the entire time your son is at university.
I wish I could say things will be different, but with speaking with fife council and senior management at the university, it seems nobody is willing to take the radical action we need now to slow the crisis.