HOMELESSNESS
The university students facing homelessness after forking out £9k a year to study
University is all about new experiences – but for some students higher education is becoming an introduction to homelessness.
Swelling student numbers, a lack of accommodation and rising rents have seen students across the UK struggle to find a place to live.
Recent research from the Centre for Homelessness Impact has found that homelessness is more prevalent in university towns and cities.
That was the case for University of Glasgow student Krishen Chadwick Patel. The 19-year-old business management with politics student has spent most of the autumn term staying in a hotel or relying on friends to offer a sofa or floor to sleep on. That left him with no cooking or laundry facilities. A shortage of accommodation prompted the university to email students on September 9 advising them to “not travel to Glasgow” and to consider whether to “suspend or withdraw from studies” if they did not have a place to live.
After weeks of sofa surfing, the university paid for Patel to stay in hotel accommodation during October, but he was asked to pay £160 a week from November 1, replicating the average price charged to students in university residences. So he chose to return to hidden homelessness.
“I thought I’d be doing that for two weeks or whatever so I’d take a few T-shirts, a
