The shocking image of private student rentals?
Chris Hogan, 2nd October 2017, Landlords
Opinion poll suggests landlords do not do enough to look after student lets. Agree or disagree?
Headlines about students living in squalor appeared a few months ago when 'new research' (according to Huffington Post and others) revealed the state that two-thirds of students were living in. Highlights included:
- 65% living in squalor,
- 47% live in houses with damp,
- 4 in 10 have been left without heating or running water,
- a quarter of issues raised by students are never dealt with by landlords.
The source of these claims is an annual survey of student accommodation to which just over 2,000 students responded. It is run by Save the Student, a website that collects and promotes a wide range of deals and offers for students. The survey covered students in both private and university accommodation as well as those living with parents.
Survey results
To be fair the original article summarising the findings didn't call their work 'research', but instead referred to it (more accurately) as a survey.
With nearly 2 million students in full-time education between the ages of 18 to 24 the survey didn't cover a very high proportion of the student population. It could also be that those experiencing accommodation problems were more likely to respond to the survey.
Did they say squalor?
In addition many of the survey's findings seemed to be misrepresented in other coverage. The summarising article doesn't refer to squalor at all; there's no indication of what constitutes squalor - defined as "the state of being extremely dirty and unpleasant, especially as a result of poverty or neglect".
Something going wrong with a property and subsequently being fixed isn't squalor unless it goes on for long enough for conditions to get that bad. Having said that some landlords tend to think students are second-class citizens and treat their complaints less seriously than they would those from professional tenants.
Statistics
The point about 65% living in squalor, which some online articles lead with, isn't made at all by Save the Student, at least not in the summarising article. The only point where 65% appears regards the number of students who experienced 'serious accommodation issues'. There's no indication of how serious those problems are and how quickly they were fixed, so to transform those situations into 'living in squalor' may be stretching the point somewhat.
In the interests of full disclosure we should point out that these online articles may have been prompted by a press release and if that was the case, we haven't seen that press release.
Save the Student advises students who experience problems with their accommodation to report issues as promptly as possible. Responsible landlords will appreciate that, as they want to know about problems as quickly as possible too - there's no benefit to landlords in allowing property problems to get worse, as that just eats into returns.
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