The housing crisis in Ireland appears to have persisted long enough to be considered a permanent aspect of daily life there.
A report by Simon Communities of Ireland, published in the first quarter of 2022, shows a 92% drop in affordable housing since June 2021, when there were 906 properties available.
International students have been affected immensely; Either accommodation is unavailable or prohibitively expensive. Since they have trouble finding rented housing once they arrive in Ireland, an increasing number of international students mainly English-language students are being forced to spend the nights on the streets, in cars, or on couches in friends’ houses.
The Irish Examiner published a story of a student who bought an 800-euro old vehicle to sleep in because that was her only option and another Sebastian Carvallo Farina, from Chile who spent two nights sleeping on the streets in Cork city center because of the hostel he had been staying in, was booked out for the weekend.
Student welfare groups have reported that students have occasionally left their studies unfinished returned to their home country or chosen to move to another nation because they couldn’t find housing.
In its 2017 National Student Accommodation Strategy report, the Irish government stated that by the end of 2019, 7,000 beds would be available for students in Ireland.
What the government failed to mention in its report is that the majority of these accommodation options carry an expensive price tag for a decent room.
In this video, I speak with two students about their experiences looking for housing in Dublin.
