This article was first published in print on 14 March 2025 under the Roar View section.
As the housing crisis intensifies, it is clear students are feeling the squeeze. Rough sleeping is the sharpest end of a crisis that encompasses all those: sofa surfing, living in overcrowded homes, temporary accommodation or unsafe and unsuitable housing.
Years of austerity and unfair attitudes to poverty have broken the housing system with local authorities now unable or unwilling to support their residents when they need it most. Housing is a human right, but in a city where more than 183,000 people are homeless and denied their rights, a university education cannot shield people from this tsunami of injustice and insecurity that London must confront.
The mayor plans to end rough sleeping by 2030, a plan that offers hope but can be criticised as too slow. Now more than ever, it is vital we hold our politicians to account and enforce on them the urgent need for change.
The cost of bureaucratic failure on students is overlooked. The inflexibility of King’s accommodations means students facing housing problems mid-year often can’t access rooms that should be available. Instead, students are trapped in contracts they don’t want, whilst others pay the price – all to leave rooms unused and empty.
The insufficiency of King’s administration has a seriously detrimental impact on the education of students without suitable housing options. University claims to be a great equaliser but after their first year many students from the lowest-income backgrounds are left teetering on the edge of housing instability.
If housing issues emerge students struggle to access the support they need, as confronting challenges of survival and uncertainty understandably distracts them from their studies. How can students learn if they don’t even know where they will be living a month from now?
Without a change in the scope and scale of support, educational outcomes will remain unequal – especially for those students left to face these overwhelming problems alone.
KCLSU Halls for All
A KCLSU Campaign, entitled Halls for All, is asking for the University to raise the income threshold of ‘affordability’ in the upcoming review of the King’ Affordable Accommodation Scheme (KAAS).
KAAS offers rooms to undergraduate students at below-market rates. This involves a limited number of rooms assigned to students meeting the current eligibility criteria of a household income below £42,875 a year.
This is massively important, with the threshold for support not being updated since 2014, despite a cumulative inflation of 31% since then, fewer and fewer people have been able to access the support they need.
However, this cannot be the sole focus.
Currently having a household income below the threshold doesn’t guarantee a room, with such a limited supply. Therefore, expanding the eligibility criteria with no change in the number of rooms available will only increase the demand for an already stretched stock of rooms.
Currently, rooms are allocated based on three priority groups. The first priority is for care experienced and estranged students. The second – for students based outside London and the final priority is for students based in London. So if all KAAS places have already been allocated to students of higher priority an applicant with household income well below £42,875 a year could still be rejected and left to face a hostile housing market.
It is university policy for 20% of its accommodation portfolio to be KAAS rooms. Re-opening the unused rooms in the abandoned Champion Hill accommodation in Camberwell could go a long way to ease the current squeeze on supply.
The London housing market is notoriously punishing, and there is more the University should be doing to protect their students. KCLSU Campaigns have achieved a lot for students to be grateful for and as KAAS hasn’t been reviewed since its introduction in 2014 this could lead to another significant victory.
However, introducing more competition for places won’t help those who need support the most, those most vulnerable students who still aren’t guaranteed affordable housing options.
Campaigners generously give their time advocating on behalf of students but if this demand is achieved it has the chance to harm students further by lowering their chances to access to KAAS. Before offering the scheme to more students the University should ensure it’s providing for every student already eligible.
Roar calls on the newly elected KCLSU officials to continue the fight for a fairer housing system at King’s so all students can access the safety and security they are entitled to.
