A PropTech supplier claims 83 per cent of students have lived in accommodation considered ‘unfit for habitation’ under the Homes Act 2018.
A survey of over 1,000 students by Stint found that 41 per cent have lived in a property with mould or damp. Some 45 per cent have had a broken door or window lock, with 19 per cent having a broken smoke alarm.
This is against a backdrop where 85 per cent of students believe the quality of their student accommodation is important or very important to their mental health.
In terms of cost, 21 per cent of students apparently claim to spend 100 per cent of their maintenance loan on rent: Stint says “these taxpayer-funded loans are designed to cover all living costs, from monthly rent and food to transport and textbooks, yet these figures reveal that hundreds of thousands of students are forced to spend their entire loan to cover rent on substandard housing.”
Company co-founder Sol Schlagman adds: “Students having to put up with shoddy housing has always been treated as par for the course and as a bit of a joke. This is a joke that has gone too far. No one should be forced to live in unsafe accommodation, particularly when hundreds of thousands of students are spending their entire maintenance loan on it.
“At a minimum, the government should protect students by including student landlords in any forthcoming landlord register. This will ensure that landlords are held to account and deliver the housing that the student community deserve.”
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Not rented to students since the 90s, however when I did everything was fine until January, they came back to a cold house that hadn't had the heating on, soon I would get a call to say the house was damp round I would go and it was cold and damp when I asked why the heating was not on the reply was it's too expensive to turn on, still got that house today 2 guys late 50s and no damp problems, they heat the place and during the day the bedroom windows are open, most student problems are self inflicted, simply zero common sense, more interested in going out drinking than turning the heating on.
Students don't understand the words 'adequate heating' and 'sufficient ventilation', coupled with their insistence on drying clothes indoors and on the radiators. That's why they get condensation and then mould. Its nothing to do with the house being shoddy.
When the same property is let to 'normal' professional tenants, these 'problems' don't exist.
Since we introduced bills inclusive to all of our Student Lets (150 properties) we get 1-2 reports of excessive mould / damp a year, which9 out of 1-10 times is found to be that a radiator hasn't been turned on or drying clothes on radiators without adequate ventilation.
With a lot of student houses being licensed by the Council I can't see that these so called statistics can stand up. How will a landlord register help, those landlords already doing a good job or using an agent that specialize in student accommodation will of course register and pay through the nose for it but those that aren't adhering to management regulations will just try and stay under the radar and continue to provide 'shoddy' student accommodation
Very seldom its the Building to blame, that’s well proven. Its the Culture of the occupants Students or Adults.
Hate propaganda against landlords is very on trend at the moment they are all trying to outdo each other in their levels of hate crime
Of course the next logical step is to ambush landlords and their families in the street and stab them ,
I wonder how far we are away from that ,I am sure the three big landlord hate gangs will be happy to fund the purchase of the weapons
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