Students scramble for new housing as ‘luxury’ accommodation is reallocated to asylum seekers

the government remains committed to winding everybody up and ignoring the public opinion...they basically don't give a s***

Does anyone know why there were only 170 students lined up for a 405 room property in an area where there is apparently a shortage of student accommodation? It just sounds a bit odd.

Reply to the comment left by Seething Landlord at 01/09/2023 - 10:29
It does seem odd because that would mean the accommodation would only be at 42% capacity. And there are two figures here anyway...170 and 150....150 would be 37% capacity (assuming nobody sharing rooms). I'm guessing we don't know all the facts.

But if the accommodation was at less than 50% capacity this close to term time and the Home Office offers the landlord 100% capacity you can see the landlord's point of view. I'm not surprised the landlord declined to comment.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 01/09/2023 - 10:40
That's pretty much what I was thinking.

Reply to the comment left by Seething Landlord at 01/09/2023 - 10:57
So on the basis of the only available facts (which seem to be conflicting) this Business 'Prestige Student Living' does not seem to have secured the accommodation it needed. Can't really blame the landlord here. The Home Office isn't just out-competing other seekers of residential accommodation here, it's doing it elsewhere as well. And it may be that whatever deal they struck with the landlord is cheaper for the tax payer than having asylum seekers in hotels or maybe even on barges.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 01/09/2023 - 11:06
Yes, but why let rational analysis get in the way of an opportunity to bash government and "greedy" landlords in one go?

Student accommodation at £200 per week! In Huddersfield! Blimey. The world has gone mad

Reply to the comment left by Grumpy Doug at 01/09/2023 - 11:52
That's probably why it was going to be half empty.

Reply to the comment left by Grumpy Doug at 01/09/2023 - 11:52
I'm not sure it's gone mad as such. I recall in previous debates about housing asylum seekers people on housing waiting lists complaining about asylum seekers getting accommodation whilst they were still waiting and councils responding with something like 'accommodation being provided for asylum seekers not the accommodation allocated for those on the council house waiting lists' in an attempt to suggest that there is no competition for accommodation.

The fact is that the Home Office is competing for accommodation and it's doing that to cut the hotel bill paid by the tax payer. If it wasn't doing that and it was putting asylum seekers into permanent houses or flats instead it would then be competing for the [not very available] long-term accommodation that people on council house waiting lists are trying to get. So the truth is the Home Office is competing for short-term accommodation and this is likely to have an affect on availability for other users of short-term accommodation. An additional factor is that the various UK governments have made the provision of short-term accommodation more attractive than being a long-term landlord.

I can't really see any villains in this story but I think it's likely to generate a back-lash because the people who suffer from immigration rather than benefit from it are typically the people at the lower end of the economic scale. If you're a single parent in grotty, damp, cold accommodation or living in a bedsit and you've been there for a couple of years you're not going to be impressed by economic migrants being allocated better accommodation than you're living in. And you're also not going to be impressed when they complain about it.

Was there already a fixed term tenancy agreement in place?

On what grounds were the students evicted?

Who served the eviction?

Were the students offered "incentives" to move out (or not move in)?