‘Cut the Rent’, a campaign active at UCL since 2015 is now gearing up to take action at King’s Accommodations.
‘Cut the Rent’ targets poor living conditions and high rent prices in student accommodations. It also points towards the fact that universities profit greatly from first year students who do not have a great range of options when coming to London.
“We have had problems with pests, broken wifi and no hot water.â€, ‘UCL, Cut the Rent’ leadership commented during their info meeting for this year. The meeting took place on October 9th at the Institute of Education.
The main tactic so far has been rent-strikes, which entails students withholding their period 2 rent payment in order to force leadership to the table.
“We started with 150 students and it grew to over a thousand.â€, they further chronicled.
With an initial demand of a 40% rent cut, a final cut of 5% was negotiated for the UCL Hall Max Rayne at the end of last year.
The KCL chapter of ‘Cut the Rent’ was launched in August of this year and currently have just over a hundred followers on facebook. They still have not announced their first meeting.
What can we expect from ‘KCL, Cut the Rent’? If they follow the pattern previously set by the UCL, they will most likely focus on a King’s hall of residence were the conditions are particularly poor such as Great Dover Street, who have had the most reports of pest during the last 5 years. Whether ‘KCL, Cut the Rent’ will also use rent strikes as their central tactic remains to be seen.
