“Where are you living this year?”
For some, this question brings back memories of scrambling to organise tenancies and coordinate renting plans. The panic of finding student accommodation in Oxford parallels a national housing crisis, just as manifest here as anywhere else. Private rentals for students line the streets in Cowley and Iffley (and for unfortunate Univ-ites, in the far reaches of Stavs), placing further stress on the already-boosted prices.
It’s no secret that the students are one of the driving forces behind this increasing unaffordability of Oxford: Oxford City Council’s 2021 Census found that 36,217 students lived in Oxford full-time, making up more than a quarter of the city’s population. More than half of these live outside of colleges. Student demand has perhaps encouraged landlords and estate agents to increase housing prices: on average, they have increased 4% this past year, compared to the UK average of 2.2%.
This housing crisis also has a disproportionate effect on those with vulnerable residencies. Proportionally, Oxford has one of the highest rates of rough sleeping, although numbers have dropped since pre-COVID years. The dearth of available council housing regularly forces refugees to pursue Section 95, an accommodation scheme that relocates individuals on a no-choice basis to somewhere else in the UK, with little regard for the ties and communities they may have formed in Oxford.
This issue isn’t unique to Oxford – Durham faces a similar problem with students pricing-out its former residents, and the UK’s housing crisis is far from over. Where Oxford University stands out in particular is through its collegiate system, and the networks of change this allows students to activate.
Even if we, as students, cannot be directly blamed, to think of Oxford’s housing crisis as not our responsibility is an act of deliberate ignorance. When student accommodation never increases above 6% per annum, yet rough sleeping rates continue to climb, it seems pertinent to ask: who really pays for Oxford?
If you’d like to get more involved in the effort combatting homelessness, Oxfordshire Homeless Movement has a page of resources and opportunities where volunteer help is needed. There are options for donating money, items, and your own time.
