University students across UK prepare for wave of rent strikes

Students from 25 campuses across the UK are attending pre-term workshops this weekend on how to hold a rent strike at their university, as fears grow that the spiralling cost of accommodation is making higher education unaffordable.

Shelly Asquith, vice-president for welfare at the National Union of Students, said accommodation costs had increased by 18% between 2012-13 and 2015-16 and that rent strikes were now a key tactic for students. “Extortionate rents, coupled with course fees and other rising living costs, are now preventing lots of working-class students from attending university altogether, especially in cities such as London,” she said. “According to our own figures at NUS, over 50% of students say they can’t afford their basic expenses of rent and other bills,” she told an event in south London, where students were learning how to hold a successful rent strike.

The Rent Strike Weekender event was designed to build on a success at UCL, where 1,000 students withheld payments as part of a five-month dispute. UCL’s management was eventually forced to back down, offering a range of concessions including rent freezes, and a £350,000 accommodation bursary for disadvantaged students.

The NUS is calling for a system where 25% of all university bed spaces are offered at 50% of the maximum amount of maintenance loan available. The union is pledging legal guidance, support in petitioning university management and a safe account where students can deposit their accommodation fees.

Asquith said rent strikes had the potential to spread across UK universities. “When people first hear about rent strikes they think, ‘That sounds a bit scary,’ but where they have happened lots of students who don’t see themselves as political have got involved because they see hundreds of other people in their halls doing it. It’s about strength in numbers.”

At Sussex University, 1,000 students who live on campus have signed a petition calling for rent caps. A second-year English student at the university, who did not wish to be named, said they had been inspired by the success of the UCL campaign.

He added: “In 2010 students cared about tuition fees because that was the big issue. Now students live very different lives: rates of mental illness are much higher, many, many more people are in work – around 60% of students have to work now. Students aren’t as comfortable as they used to be and as life gets tougher people are stopping caring about huge policy issues and thinking, ‘I’m finding it increasingly difficult to live in Brighton and study on campus’.”

Martin Blakey, chief executive of student housing charity Unipol, said the expansion of high-end accommodation and studio flats was pricing students out. In London, the proportion of studio flats has increased from 6% in 2011-12 to 29% in 2015-16, according to NUS/Unipol research. Last academic year, average student rents were £226 per week in London and £134 across the rest of the UK.

“If you look at London, it’s really the eye of the storm and it’s a warning story of what might happen elsewhere. This year in Nottingham there’s about an extra 800 bed spaces coming online from purpose-built operators. And of that about 650 of those are studio flats, ie very expensive,” he said, adding that the trend was not driven by student demand.

Universities should develop an affordable rent strategy, he said. “Quite often institutions just don’t notice that a lot of their accommodation is getting very expensive. The regional variations are really significant and they don’t necessarily bear any relation to housing prices.”

Ben Beach, an activist at the Radical Housing Network, which helped organise the rent strike event, said it would include sessions on how to organise a campaign, cope with legal issues and negotiate with university bosses. He added that many young people felt there was nothing to lose by taking part. “I think people are just thinking, ‘Well we might as well give it a go’,” he said.