Accommodation crisis impacting Mayo students

The accommodation crisis is having a major impact on the mental health of third-level students.

“In the mental health cases I supported students with last year, 90% of them and their struggles circled back to being impacted by their issues with securing suitable accommodation. It has a tremendous impact on the health of student with many of them often feeling lonely, lost or having thoughts of dropping out,” Christina McGuinness, Vice-President of Mayo ATU Student’s Union told the Western People.

She said the accommodation situation in Mayo has improved slightly this year but remains a huge struggle. 

"Because of Castlebar town and the surrounding towns and villages being such a small area, and with the lack of any purpose-built student accommodation, the majority of students need to avail of digs-style housing.

“This year, thanks to ATU’s An Post flyer drop, there was a rise in the number of first-time landlords in the locality which has helped somewhat. This is very positive and has helped a lot of students ahead of the swiftly-approaching academic year. Unfortunately, however, it is still a challenge to secure seven-day accommodation as most digs-style vacancies are only available for a five-day tenancy.” 

Ms McGuinness said the local community has been incredibly supporting in offering up rooms to rent but Mayo is struggling without purpose-built accommodation. 

“Many big cities have some form of purpose-built student accommodation where a percentage of students are guaranteed to be housed for the duration of their studies. This is something that has been spoken about and proposed for Castlebar previously but unfortunately nothing has came to fruition thus far despite it being desperately needed.” 

She said the rent-a-room scheme has helped but some landlords are taking advantage of students. 

“Unfortunately, there have been a few cases where landlords have upped their rent significantly to get as much of the €14,000 that they can. This leaves students in a stressful situation where they may not be able to afford the increased price but know it will be difficult to find accommodation elsewhere.”

Mayo-based students have also been targeted by scam artists. 

"Unfortunately, there have been a few. Last year I worked with a small number of students who collectively were scammed out of €7,000 in between September and November," said Ms McGuinness. 

Earlier this month, the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau reported that accommodation fraud cases have increased by 22%.