Richard Boyd Barrett: For-Profit Housing Fails Students

Yes, just to be clear, and I'm sorry, apologies, I'm coming in late, but we have the Students' Union here, Amalé, and we have the PBSA, is that right? Right, yeah. We've Dara, TUS, Midlands Midwest, Ciarán and Niamh from the PBSA, and Brian is the President of Amalé. How are you? I read the student submission and I agree with it all, so I don't have a lot to add, except I'm on your side. Why is there 14,000 unacted upon planning permissions, does anybody know? Yeah, Deputy, the 14,000, by our estimate, over 30% are on hold, and then it's down to viability. When you build them, they're not viable to run, so they'll never be built actually, or unlikely unless the regulatory environment changes or something changes in the cost base, because these are operating assets, as I said to your colleagues earlier, they're operating assets, a significant amount of income that they generate is spent operating them, so they're just not viable, they don't work, and that's why they won't be activated. As we say in our statement, planning permissions don't deliver beds, viability delivers beds, and it's not even, the challenge that we have is not necessarily planning, I mean planning has some issues obviously, but it's not planning led, by and large. Not just planning. Not just planning. Construction cost inflation, where a scheme might have been viable when you were doing your pre-acquisition due diligence and other things, that construction cost inflation combined with higher cost of finance, because a lot of the finance has moved elsewhere, so scarcity of finance makes it more expensive, also coupled with the fact that capital investors like to have a time frame, a time horizon on those things, and I think the inability to underwrite for time has been, lots of delays have been. Doesn't your explanation, because I hear you, viability, but doesn't that underline the point that I obviously picked up on there, is that the for-profit sector is never going to deliver affordable subsidised housing, which is what we actually need. Even when the private sector does deliver student housing, from what I can see, it's completely unaffordable for students. I don't know if the students want to underline that point, but I just think it's insane looking stuff up in UCD for $1,200 and $1,400, that's on the National University campus, and then you look at the stuff around Dublin City that's built in the same region. That to me is not serious for huge numbers of students. So we have to go for a subsidised, not-for-profit model in order to deliver affordable student housing. We can't have things held up because somebody thinks it's not viable, it's needed, it's necessary for the students. Potentially to look in other areas. I think a way that we've tackled it elsewhere has been to create student hubs in parts of the cities that are still accessible, but maybe slightly further away from the CBD. If you look at London, Wembley has delivered an enormous amount of student accommodation, Tottenham Hale. Whilst they're not right in the city centre, they're on very strong transport connectivity links, and they've been able to deliver much more affordable products in those areas. That could be one mechanism of making it work, or as you alluded to earlier, having a certain allocation of the student beds being affordable students. In the UK, again, you could only charge a third of a student's student loan. That's the annual student loan provision. A certain quantum of bed spaces can only be delivered at a third of that student loan amount. I'm just using other examples, but it does seem in order to tackle this affordability crisis that exists, that other mechanisms are going to be needed to be utilised. What does that mean exactly? Do you know what I mean, other mechanisms? The mechanism certainly I think the students are advocating, and certainly the one I'd advocate, is that the state builds not-for-profit, affordable student accommodation, and it does it because it's needed. If it has to subsidise the cost, then that's what it has to do, because getting students educated and ensuring that they can study and don't have to drop out because they can't afford student accommodation or work ridiculous hours while they're studying, and therefore not study. These are things we have to do for the students and also for our society. In fact, the need for skilled people and qualified people has never been greater. The students are doing us a favour by studying as a society, and yet we hear of viability obstacles to building places they need to live. To me it doesn't add up. Do you know what I mean? I think a cross-section of different types are definitely needed, and absolutely. Public-private partnerships, exclusively state delivery, and the private sector working together is definitely required, and we wouldn't be disputing that. Okay. And from the students, do you have anything to add about what we could do for you in terms of what you've proposed here? I think, from our perspective, the most major thing that can be done is DIGS legislation. I think that's been something we've called out for quite a long time, and I think it's just absolutely necessary to protect students. When we're looking at purpose-built student accommodation, having a percentage of beds set aside for Susie-based students, people that are low socio-economical groups or minority groups, allowing these people that traditionally don't have access to education to be given that step up, but 1,200 to 1,400 euro a month in rent is just not viable. More beds of that market rate will only just be based for an international market and not for the students that are trying to get accommodation at the moment. So you're looking for rent caps, presumably, sort of maximum rent levels for student accommodation that's affordable. Where would you see affordability in terms of...? Our policy stance on affordability was, I believe what we voted on at our COGOL was 30% of what was the minimum wage. It's gone up to a living wage. If we're expecting that's the target of what the wage of students are going to be earning, realistically, that should be what we're basing it off of, because we have a number of students that are estranged. We have some families that are in a financial position to support students but don't deem it to be so. I was told by my career's guidance to not go to college because I couldn't afford it. I still went, hence why I starved, in order to try and make ends meet. It's something that students can mainly afford and we deem that to be 30%, because that is always the golden rule, that 30% of your wage should be going towards your rent.