Post in Should Brookes students be allowed to have cars?

Aug 10 09:27 UTC

On 9 Aug 2008, at 22:50, Julia Gasper wrote:

> I don't know what Jock means about "the private landlords who make
> so much out of the lucrative student market." Only yesterday a
> foreign student was complaining to me that Brookes charges him £664
> per month merely for a room, and then has the cheek to charge
> another £2.50 per week for internet access!

Unless this person is paying for one of the few two room flats we
have (and nobody is allocated those without expressly applying for
them, usually as a family) there is no hall of residence that charges
anywhere near £153 a week.  Perhaps he's got arrears?  Perhaps he's
in Cheney and splitting his 50 weeks contract into what he considers
as "useable" ie the 8 months of semester times only (which is partly
the planners' doing in that one of the conditions on Cheney was that
it would not be used for summer schools so has to be let to the
student for 50 weeks).  £2.50 a week for what should be in most halls
be amongst the fastest internet access in Oxford doesn't seem like a
bad deal to me.  I only know of one landlord (and he doesn't take
students by and large) who rolls all the bills, especially telecoms/
cable into the rent.  And, if memory serves, they also get their
annual bus pass and I think I'm right in saying now that for all
halls a Brookes bus service from right outside their halls.

In halls, all energy use is in the bill, they get their flats (but
not bedrooms) cleaned every week, in the newer halls which I think
this coming year will be £120 a week (which I agree is expensive,
more on which later*) they'll have their own en suite shower room and
loo and their bedroom is about 12 sq m excluding these shower "pods"
Their shared kitchen/sitting room is actually large enough to fit all
of them and some friends in at once (to my chagrin - "friends"
usually means "party") and all get a maintenance service that would
make any private landlord or their agents' eyes water.  They pay no
deposit, and do not have joint and several liability with people they
met only a few weeks before they had to start the hunt for their
second year accommodation.  They can call someone out 24hrs a day for
any problems, even if we can't fix them all at 4am - or in one case I
had refuse to call out Bruce Gillingham at 6am one morning because a
student with a bit of flu wanted the last rights!

Now, I'm sorry, I don't know how many student rented houses you have
visited in person, and maybe I've only ever been to really bad ones,
but by comparison, halls are worth a great deal more than any private
student accommodation I've seen when you add everything up.  For not
an inconsiderable number of the better off students, however, judging
by the overheard snippets of conversation, in the recent housing boom
at least, one disbenefit of halls is that you don't own it and make
money out of it!

> No private landlord would dare to charge anything like so much. I
> meet loads of students, British and otherwise, who tell me that
> they are keen to go and live in private accommodation, ideally a
> house-share, and one reason is that it saves them so much money. My
> own son and his friends are among them, so don't tell me about
> "surveys after surveys".

I don't need to tell you about surveys - but AFAIK they do all say
most responding students want more university owned accommodation,
but that yes, they find it expensive, and that the private market in
Oxford is unsatisfactory, and also expensive for what you get.  I can
merely point you to the rapid success of the (some now huge) private
companies who build and run halls.  They cannot build their halls
fast enough for the demand.  And most Brookes students will never
have seen some of the flats that are now being built for marketing to
continuing year students, because we don't have any, but those
private companies recognize there is a different dynamic in
continuing years - with self selecting groups wanting to live
together.  These companies are marketing high price, yes, but high
quality accommodation and are succeeding in spades.  One company
tries to build a gym and swimming pool into all its new halls!

> As for students having cars, this has been regularly banned by many
> universities up and down the country over the past thirty-five
> years at least. Only the very richest students can afford a car,
> and so to complain that they are being treated like second-class
> citizens is rather a stretch of the imagination.

I agree that only the very richest of students can afford a car,
which is one reason why I don't even take as read that the car
problem is all student caused.  The last time the Brookes "Green
Commuting Group" did a survey of first years at the end of their stay
in halls about modes of transport I think it was more than ninety per
cent said that they would not be bringing a car to Oxford in
subsequent years.  Nevertheless since the roads are common property,
taking away one group's right to use some of that common property is
creating two classes of people.

*Now, I tend to agree that halls, indeed any accommodation
(especially in Oxford) is expensive.  The private halls companies for
example have been buying land at prices that imply them getting
between £5.5k and £7k per bedroom per year for their halls,
considerably more than most Brookes halls.  I have been trying for
some years to drum up some, any, enthusiasm for trying out some co-
operative halls of residence.  They do very well in North America and
in the far east and, since most domestic services and so on are
carried out by the students working on a rota or similar, they keep
running costs low enough to be able, in my calculations anyway, to
provide halls quality accommodation for private rented rates and
maintaining all the other benefits of halls.  The market needs a
variety of providers, not just those in it for shareholder gain, and
especially with the small amount of land available in Oxford if we
were to get into a position where we had just one or maybe a couple
of the private halls companies stitching up the market prices would
inevitably rise, and not just in the halls market but in the private
rented market as well to match.