‘Keep student summer housing for students’

A CORK student housing body has called for students in the city during the summer to be given accommodation ahead of short-term holidaymakers .

Cork Student Housing Co-operative is a group of students and alumni from third-level institutions in Cork city. They are working to provide not-for-profit student accommodation “through the co-operative model of mutual aid, self-help, solidarity and democracy”.

One co-op member recently complained that while he was searching for accommodation in the city, he came across three options on the popular booking.com website, showing short-term lets that were all “supposed to be” student accommodation.

Non-students are allowed to use this type of accommodation during the summer, when college students are on holidays.

However, a co-op spokesperson told The Echo that, “while it’s true that the vast majority of students wouldn’t be in student accommodation during these periods, we still feel that it is taking accommodation from students that would be in the city during the summer, such as foreign students or postgrads.

“I myself am a postgrad student and I’m going to have to try and find accommodation for next summer.” 

He said this is “rather difficult” when the majority of rooms are open to tourists, he said.

Allowing student accommodation to be turned into short-term Airbnb-type budget accommodation also ends up “undercutting every local BnB and hotel option,” he said. “This is not only going to seriously harm our local hospitality businesses, but also the students who are still trying to find somewhere to live this summer.”

Student housing co-ops exist in North America and Europe, the spokesperson said. “It’s a communal house or series of flats that are owned by the students living within them, and democratically run,” he said.

“It’s not so much the idea of students coming together to buy a house, as it is students collectively owning a house, and the ownership of that house being passed on to the next group of students who come into it, so it stays within collective ownership.”