The Government is going to force new universities by decree to include among their facilities some type of housing solution for their students. The measure, included in a protocol signed by the Ministries of Housing, Economy and Universities, affects all newly created centers, but given that no public center has been opened for 25 years nor is there any plan to do so, it is aimed at private, which grow like mushrooms throughout the territory.
The Minister of Universities, Diana Morant, announced that she intends to implement this declaration of intent in updating the Royal Decree on the creation of university centers with which her department wants to tighten the minimum characteristics that a university must have to be considered as such.
The protocol also contemplates the construction of housing solutions at affordable prices for students and university workers on public land in the municipalities with the most rental problems. “The parties have reached appropriate agreements [para] enable the coordinated adoption (…) of different measures that contribute to achieving the intended balance (…) guaranteeing that the new universities offer housing solutions for their students as a necessary requirement for their implementation,” the protocol says.
Added to the general problem of access to housing is the proliferation of private centers in practically all autonomous communities, which further strains the rental market. Andalusia has opened – or is in the process of opening – four new private universities in a handful of years, three of them with a headquarters in Malaga. Extremadura is on the same path, like Madrid, where the creation of centers is going at such a pace that it is difficult to keep track. The Business Institute is expanding in Segovia at a rapid pace. Vitoria has a new campus, like Vigo, Santiago and A Coruña, and UNIR intends to move part of its classes from virtual to in-person in Logroño. The list goes on and on.
With the landing of a university in a city, a problem is generated invisiblebut very real: “The implementation of a university has a direct impact on the rental real estate market, significantly and permanently increasing the demand for accommodation in this regime, often altering the pre-existing dynamics, exhausting the supply and increasing prices “, reads the protocol signed by the ministries of Housing and Urban Agenda, Economy, Commerce and Business and Science, Innovation and Universities.
“The problem has been getting worse”
“This is my fourth year at the University and the problem has been getting worse. There are fewer and fewer apartments, more and more people searching and more and more expensive. Now a room costs 400 or 500 euros, and if you’re lucky.” Omar Lukach is the president of the Student Council of the University of Malaga and in addition to experiencing the problem firsthand, he sees how it affects others. “We get everything: people asking about residences, requirements, alternatives, looking for an apartment or roommates…”
Málaga is the perfect example of the tensions that students and university workers suffer when finding accommodation. In a city already problematic for accessing housing, several business schools and at least three private universities have been added to the public UMA’s offering in recent years: Utamed, the Alfonso X el Sabio Mare Nostrum University and the European University from Andalusia. Affordable housing options for students are few. Student residences are scarce and expensive, although they usually include maintenance. There are some starting at 450 euros per room, but some already charge 900 euros, even requiring payment for the entire course in advance. The Jiménez Fraud, the only public one, only has 257 places for students to apply for in May, based on an inverse income scale. Its monthly cost is 180 euros.
At the University of Castilla-La Mancha, one in five students comes from another community, and more than half of those who have enrolled in first year this year also come from abroad or study too far from their homes. All of them are looking for an apartment, putting pressure on the rental market in cities with university campuses.
In Castilla-La Mancha they are not there yet, but they are on their way and they want to anticipate by adhering to the protocol, comments José Julián Garde López-Brea, rector of the UCLM. “Compared to other cities we do not have this problem, but we are beginning to notice it and it is advisable to stop it long before it reaches us. When it becomes unsustainable, as is happening in other cities, it will be too late.” Garde explains that Albacete is the campus of the University of Castilla-La Mancha where the situation is beginning to become tense, and that Toledo, which has more expensive rental prices, appears in second position. The University is already working with the City Councils to locate possible land, says the leader, who insists on the idea that the prices of these future accommodations must be “social” if the plan is to be successful.
The rector measures the situation at UCLM: “At the university level, of the 23,850 students enrolled last year, 22% had not taken the Ebau here, which means they come from outside. These are people who are living in residences or rental apartments. It also happens that since our provinces are very large, in addition to those who come from outside, we have students who are from a region far from the campus where they study and also need housing. In the first course (the new students who arrive in a year) we have 6,300 students, and of them – either because they took the Ebau abroad or because their homes are far away – we estimate that about 3,600 are in homes or residences. Garde emphasizes that the problem does not only affect the student body: researchers who carry out temporary stays or visiting professors find it more difficult to access rentals of a few months. The plan, as the protocol says, also includes these profiles.
Up to 10% of demand
In some municipalities, demand from the university sector can account for up to 10% of the possible rental supply. Almost 75% of university students study in a city other than the one in which they usually reside, according to the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. That’s a million people looking for a place to live, not counting teachers. It is inevitable, explains Leire Iglesias, general director of Sepes (Public Land Business Entity), of the Ministry of Housing, that the impact reaches the price of apartments.
The main measure contemplated in the protocol is to make public land in particularly stressed university cities available to public universities, to create public accommodation for all people linked to the universities, especially students, but also teaching and research staff. “We are looking for land with very specific characteristics,” explains Iglesias, from Sepes. “This is a novelty that the housing law contemplates: it allows these accommodations to be made on public land, where homes cannot be built. normal”, he illustrates.
This will require the collaboration of all administrations – these lands usually belong to the City Councils – which will have to give them up or perhaps exchange these lands for other lands belonging to the central government to build accommodation for university staff. Iglesias does not believe that this point will be a problem. “I think that any city council that has untapped land, knowing that it will be for that sector of the population, will be in favor of taking advantage of it and not fighting a political battle,” he maintains.
Simplifying the process, the idea is that the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities studies and locates the territories with university presence with the most problems of access to housing, the councils lay the groundwork, Housing promotes actions through the development of a specific program for the promotion of university housing and Economy facilitate access to credit lines from the Official Credit Institute (ICO) to universities or private developers (in this case in exchange for their management for years) to build these accommodations.
This seeks to minimize this phenomenon, which is beginning to occur in more and more cities and which the Ministry exemplifies in Segovia. In the Castilian-Leonese city there are two large study centers: the campus of the University of Valladolid and the IE University. Since last year, IE already had nearly a thousand more students enrolled than the University of Valladolid, according to the Transparency Portal of the Junta de Castilla y León. And this also affects the price of rent, since the IE student profile (the academic year costs a minimum of 25,000 euros) has more financial resources than that of the public one.
Before the pandemic, the government team that then ran the city (PSOE) attributed the increase in rental prices to the high number of foreign and wealthy students studying at IE University and who could pay more than the average student. In fact, IE University (which has not responded to this newspaper) offers several residences or apartments for its own students and they range between 800 euros per month and 1,700 euros. In the last year, the price of housing rentals has increased by 13% in the capital of Segovia, according to data from Idealista, to an average of 10.5 euros per square meter. Now we must also add the tourism factor, a growing sector also in Segovia due to housing for tourist use.
From virtual to in-person in Logroño
The only private university that exists in La Rioja, UNIR, has already become the first company in the autonomous community with more than 1,600 employees. Its headquarters, from which more than 66,000 students from some 80 countries are served, is located just a few meters from the campus of the public University of La Rioja.
Although to date this university only teaches online degrees, last June it formally requested authorization to teach in-person classes, news that generated a lot of social commotion, union and student protests, and which went ahead with the support of PP and Vox. A few days later, the Government of La Rioja, the University of La Rioja and UNIR signed a three-way agreement by which the private university undertook not to teach face-to-face classes for degrees that are already taught at the public university of La Rioja.
Even before these private in-person classes become a reality, access to housing for students in La Rioja becomes complicated. Places in residences are scarce and are around 800 euros per month with full board and shared apartments for three people are around those same figures; 300 euros if what you are looking for is just a room. “More and more students are beginning to consider living in other nearby towns, outside of Logroño, because the demand is enormous but the supply of housing is increasingly smaller and more expensive,” they explain from the real estate sector.
With information from Nestor Cenizo and Irene Velazquez
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