why we strike

Rent is everyone’s problem: so we doubt we only speak for ourselves when we say our lives are being crushed under its dead weight. Students are often told they are privileged in society, yet students today are facing many crises. A mental health crisis, a crisis of capitalism - resulting in the creation of the first generation poorer than their parents, a crisis of debt, a crisis in housing to name but a few. These crises do not exist within a vacuum, and so to attack one is to alleviate the effects of the others.

Currently the housing crisis is completely out of control. 40% or more of one's paycheck is spent entirely on landlords who provide nothing to society, leaving us with very little room to live our lives in a healthy and constructive way. What rent strikes do up and down the country is take back control of what has been stolen from us from ripoff letting agents to unsympathetic universities who care more about their management’s wages than whether the students who make up their institutions are properly fed. The latter is often no better than the former, in many cases they are worse. For example, at Sussex University the average cost for a room is £125, which gives you access to poor quality accommodation often plagued by damp and rodents. For the same price in Brighton, the second most expensive city in the UK, you can get a double bed, a nice kitchen, living space and a garden.

It is for these reasons Cut The Rent campaigns have sprung up everywhere from Aberdeen to Sussex with the most notable being UCL. These campaigns aim to make on-campus accommodation more accessible for the economically disadvantaged, the marginalised and the physically disabled. However, without a full-blown movement for a free and democratic education these campaigns act at most as a bulwark to the full marketisation of universities. Universities running as businesses mean that students are seen as numbers, staff are put on more precarious contracts and pay, and money is diverted to expensive PR, advertising and management salaries - the aim of which is to make the university look good, rather than actually be good.

So why has rent increased in university accommodation so much? The answer to this lies in the higher education reforms implemented in 2010. Although much of the media focused on the tripling of fees, actually a number of other very drastic policies were implemented. Up until 2010 university funding came largely from government subsidies. This meant that universities had more or less secure incomes every year. However, in 2010 this funding was completely cut and channeled instead into a system totally relying on fees and loans. This means that universities had to “compete” via advertising and PR for students and look for other ways to make their income more secure—and increasing rent is one of these ways. However, these rent increases are totally unjustified—especially as many university managers are given ever higher pay packages as well as shiny buildings and installations to impress incoming students and businesses.