The UK media outlets filled many column inches through September and early October 2022 as the scale of the student housing shortage, in some cities and towns in the UK, became apparent.
It had been widely reported that students enrolling at universities in Manchester had been offered housing in Liverpool and Huddersfield, students enrolling in Bristol travelling from Gloucester and Cardiff, and some attending university in St Andrews travelling to Dundee and elsewhere. The University of Glasgow also indicated that it could not now guarantee accommodation to its new students. There’s always a slight hesitation in repeating these reports, the numbers affected perhaps overegged to highlight an ongoing annual issue, or to encourage policy makers to rethink their current focus to make student accommodation the key issue. Equally for many of us experienced in the housing of students each year, the guarantee will come with a few caveats such as the applicant having had to choose the university as their first choice before a certain date, or certainly not having a permanent address within a commutable distance. Furthermore, the guarantee usually extends to only new students at that university.
This is not a problem that is going away. For those familiar with the UK higher education (HE) sector, this has consistently been a problem, a big problem in certain cities, for many years. Even at the historic low point in the population of 18-year-olds in 2020, demand for accommodation was increasing at more than twice the rate of supply. Added to this is the UK economy being ravaged by the compounding impacts of Brexit, the pandemic and spiralling inflation, all of which have significantly damaged the viability of delivering new Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (PBSA). Despite being heralded by many as the asset class to invest in, many institutional investors do not appear to be taken in by the optimism of others.
