Student Co-operative Homes

The problems

Students face high cost and low-quality housing in the UK under the current student housing regime. Through this profit centred approach to student accommodation, significant issues for both students and the communities in which they live have developed.

These issues vary by locality, but can be generalised as:

  • High rents, creating a barrier to entry for poorer students

  • Sub-standard and poorly maintained property is rife due to transitory nature of student tenants.

  • Absentee landlords and speculative investors often lead to the ghettoization of student populations and a lack of integration with local communities.

  • A lack of provision of accommodation that provides accessibility for disabled students, preventing another barrier to education

  • Students miss out on developing key skills, through the hands off approach and lack of ownership encouraged by the tenant landlord relationship

The Solution:

Student housing co-ops are a recent promising addition to the UK’s cooperative movement. With the foundation of various student housing coop’s and recent advent of Student Co-op Homes, there now exists an embryo of what could potentially be a large-scale provision of student housing co-operatives in the UK, as is the case in many other countries.

Student Co-operative Homes is a national umbrella organisation, encouraging and in some cases directly funding the acquisition of properties, owned and run by local student housing co-operatives. The Foundation has been a key player in the establishment and expansion of SCH; helping to raise funding via a community share generating £308,875, having representation on its board and providing practical experience in the establishment of student housing co-operatives.

Student Housing co-operatives pose a solution to many of the issues currently facing the student housing market, through empowering students to resolve the issues they experience in the conventional market.

  • Student Housing co-operatives provide a more equitable rent for their tenants, by democratic agreement and the needs of the tenants, rather than to generate a profit for the landlord.

  • property standards are higher due to both the long-term nature of housing co-operatives and the democratic and needs based decision making of a co-op’s membership. Similarly, as housing co-operatives are long term community institutions, they are motivated to engage with their local communities and move away from the extractive norms found within the conventional student housing market.

  • Through SCH, properties can be purchased on behalf individual student housing co-operatives by a body controlled by its memberships and whose financial success is directly tied to that of its constituent members, creating a participatory and equitable model for investment.

  • Student housing co-operatives as student led projects, can reflect the particular needs of their own communities, providing disability access, consideration for their tenant’s specific needs and providing an affordable option for otherwise marginalised groups.

  • Through being active participants and decision makers over their own homes, students learn a wealth of skills and become actively engaged with the cooperative movement and democratic decision making, facilitating a new generation of cooperatively minded innovators.

You can visit Student Co-op Homes website and learn more here: https://www.studenthomes.coop/

Areas of Impact:

  • Housing

  • Community cohesion

  • Accessibility

  • Economic inequality

  • Environmental efficiency

  • Education

  • Mutual aid

  • Bringing youth into the Co-operative movement

  • Creating a source for Co-operative investment

  • Innovating the Cooperative economy through diversifying its presence.

Student Co-op homes is focused on acquiring assets which can be leased to student housing co-ops, whilst providing them with ongoing specialist support. SCH facilitates innovation in a number of ways:

  • Student Housing Co-ops can acquire financing and Leaseback agreements, allowing the housing co-ops to generate a surplus

  • Community share offers, creating a source of initial investment and a return for its investors.

  • Central service provision, creating a low-cost high-quality route for specialist services such as accountancy, construction etc

  • A democratic membership composed of its member cooperatives, ro represent student housing cooperatives as a unified body

Why does this help?

  • Student housing co-operatives can be guided through the first hurdles, with a suite of finance, guidance and service options available.

  • Existing co-operatives with large assets can release equity by investing their capital back into the movement and growing a new generation of co-operative leaders.

  • Issues faced by student and their communities caused by the conventional rental market can be overturned with student populations turned into a positive community asset rather than a source of private profit.