Housing issues do not excuse abandoning student parents
Cartoon: Hugo Brook
When you conjure the mental image of a student, you probably don’t envision an overworked mum with a pram. It seems that Heslington Hall doesn’t either, as many student families are faced with the reality of the University completely failing to account for them in planning accommodation and nursery numbers.
Unfortunately this failure isn’t exactly new, as Nouse reported on similar failures two years ago. In 2009, the accusation was that the University failed to help students with dependent families become part of university life, but little seems to have changed. There is still a massive shortage of places at the campus nursery, while newer concerns have emerged on the failure of the University to make strong enough efforts to bridge the gap between the amount of students who seek housing for their families and the number of properties actually available.
And while this last one is not really the fault of the University admin, many landlords advertised on the University private property list have proven themselves unwilling to allow families to reside within their properties. It adds up to a situation that can only really be described as a mixture of ignorance, unfairness and unnecessary hardship.
One of the advantages of the university experience is that it enables people to expand their horizons, attend societies, become involved in college communities or play sports with likeminded people in a reasonably open environment. But with a lack of appropriate housing or care facilities available on campus, this remains a forbidden fruit to the sizeable proportion of students who are instead forced to seek homes a long way outside of the traditional areas of residence or nursery places that are a long way from campus.
The failures of private landlords to act positively are hardly surprising. While not indicative of the character of every landlord in York, there has been no shortage of disgraceful stories of discrimination from letting agents and landlords over the last few years. I’m sure few would disagree with the private properties advertised on the University system meeting certain standards, such as being willing to take on families or those in unusual situations as tenants providing they are willing to pay.
This is also a problem that challenges the ability of the University to correctly provide for mature students. It is a fact of life that the percentage of the population who are married with children increases with age, yet in a job market that demands new skills and qualifications all the time, these older families will increasingly seek university education. As these mature students are valuable to university finances, it stands to reason that investing in the capacity of the institution to carry them makes a lot of sense.
While massively unfortunate for those students with families, who are prevented from fully embracing university life due to caring arrangements or housing situations, there is also the serious danger that this kind of failure to provide by the entirety of the HE sector could be deterring a large number of young people from getting their much needed foot in the door.
With a university degree becoming more necessary to get employed in certain fields, it is a tragedy that a university with the reputation such as York offers such poor amenities. Education is so often hailed as the great equaliser, yet the majority of parents are unable to invest in their future due to unavailable facilities. Therefore it is imperative that the clear urgency of a continued campaign to improve access for student families is picked up both locally and nationally.
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I am not sure that the vast majority of houses aimed at student groups are entirely suitable for (presumably?) small families, or that such families would want those houses. There is an active rental market for non student accommodation why is this not suitable? Whether the University should or could make accommodation available for parent students is one thing, but I cannot see why parent landlords should be expected or need to market suitable accommodation specifically to parent students only. After all, wouldn’t that be a form of discrimination?