The University of Wollongong has been forced to reverse its plans to sell International House, after unprecedented demand for student accommodation.
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The university announced plans last year to sell three of its student residences, but on Friday announced International House would be "back online" to meet a shortfall in housing.
UOW Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic and Student Experience) Professor Theo Farrell said with the return of international students and classes resuming on campus, the additional accommodation with close to 220 beds will assist in meeting demand.
However, the sale of Weerona College has already been finalised, and Marketview is in negotiation stages with interested parties.
"The late release of ATARs and university offers this year has meant that planning has been compressed into a much shorter time period than usual," Professor Farrell said.
It comes as this week The Mercury spoke to several students struggling to find accommodation as the start of semester looms.
STUDENT EXPERIENCE
Sean Daniels, 19, was one of these students. After being accepted into medicine at UOW, he was excited to follow a career path that he'd always dreamed of. Instead, the stress of finding a place to live in Wollongong has left him wondering if he'll have to give it all away.
"I'm genuinely thinking I might have to give up on my dream, the one thing I've always wanted to do," he said.
Mr Daniels has been searching for a room to rent in Wollongong for a month, trawling adverts on Facebook pages, university websites and Flatmates.com, without any luck.
"I was looking at the student accommodation and that completely filled up before I could even apply. And then I've been looking for rentals for about a month now, and I can't find anywhere.
"So if I haven't found anywhere in the next 20 days then I'm going to have to drop out of Wollongong [University], give up Medicine and go back to Macquarie."
Mr. Daniels is just one of many young adults feeling the pressure of skyrocketing rental demand.
New student Neesha Krishnan is starting her first year of medicine too, but rather than focusing on the gruelling study ahead of her, she's had to spend her first weeks of term searching for a rental.
Like many incoming students, Ms Krishnan is moving to Wollongong from Sydney. She's been forced to line up her inspections with her in-person university days, and after a month of searching, she's still stuck with the long commute.
"I'm from Sydney, and Flatmates was absolutely useless. Now I've found a mate and we're trying to direct lease a place - total nightmare," she said.
"For example, an ideal place was available 11th February, before an inspection was arranged, the place was snatched up!"
UOW student Amy Eggleton is from Tumut, four hours from Wollongong, and fears that she'll have to couch surf with friends if she can't find a room soon.
"I've been looking for a place for a couple of months and have been to about eight inspections, I've messaged loads of people with no replies and have had people say they are really keen on me and it seemed like I had gotten the place, but they would just message back telling me I didn't get although I was a lovely person," she said.
"The experience has been very stressful and taken up a lot of my time."
OVERWHELMING DEMAND
Hannah Dews, an honours student at UOW, received an overwhelming number of inquiries after advertising a room in her share house on the popular Facebook page, UOW Buy and Sell.
"When I posted, there were so many messages. I got about 60 over three days. So many of them were just messaging me a thousand times, like 'when can I look, when can I look, when can I look,'" said Ms Dews.
The overwhelming demand has even seen students like Ms Dews seeking to fill rooms in share houses pull down their listings completely. Citing the pressure of so much interest, many are choosing to rent instead to someone they already know, making it even more difficult for young people from outside of Wollongong to find a home.
"I just couldn't do it, I was so overwhelmed by the whole thing, so when my friend messaged me, I just said 'yep'," said Ms Dews.
Even after she removed the listing, Ms Dews kept receiving messages from desperate renters.
"I had people message me for the last couple of weeks saying 'do you know of any properties that are similar to this. I've got a family and three kids, and I need to find a room'."
Last Sunday - in another attempt to meet demand -the UOW's housing team sent an email to staff asking them to offer up their spare rooms to students.
"UOW's Housing Services team is putting a call out to any staff, as well as family and friends, that might have a spare room to help us welcome back our students," the email read.
ONGOING CRISIS
With a high population of students coming from outside of Wollongong and a flood of Sydneysiders moving south, limited housing supply is only getting tighter, said Sean McLachlan, the Wollongong Undergraduate Student Association's Education Officer.
While the university's announcement to re-open International House may alleviate some of the pressure, the problem is much bigger, he says.
"The crisis of student housing is much larger than whether the University has enough on-campus accommodation. Many students avoid on-campus accommodation anyway because the price is too high, they're closer to Sydney prices."
For students and young people without connections in the city, finding suitable housing is a challenge, he said.
"I think moving here for the first time, students coming from Sydney, or out west, or from another state to study, it's incredibly difficult. And the alternative to that is that you could live on campus, but you'll find that on campus living, the prices are closer to a one-bedroom in Sydney. It's totally unaffordable for many students," said Mr McLachlan.
"If you don't have established connections, or already know people, it can be very difficult to find [accommodation]."
On popular housing site Flatmates.com, used frequently students and young people looking for share houses, the listings paint a grim picture. On Friday, the site showed 75 room listings and over 453 profiles for people looking for rooms, highlighting a demand that heavily outweighs supply.
With December vacancy rates sitting at 0.6% in Wollongong, UOW students may have to tough out a lengthy commute to university for a while longer.
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Rosie Bensley
Illawarra Mercury trainee journalist and newest recruit.
Illawarra Mercury trainee journalist and newest recruit.
