Alan Morris, Luke Ashton, and Shaun Wilson write for The Conversation.
Student visa applications in the second half of 2022 were up 40% on the same period in 2019.
The downside is many of these students are likely to struggle to find affordable and adequate accommodation. They are facing record-low private rental vacancy rates and higher rents than before the pandemic.
Redfern Legal Centre’s International Student Legal Service NSW has been assisting international students for over a decade. Its senior solicitor, Sean Stimson, told us:
The tenancy situation facing international students in the second half of 2022 – including illegal evictions and illegal rent increases – is the worst I’ve seen. We are increasingly seeing international students who are occupying substandard, illegal accommodation, exposing themselves to dangerous environments.
To make matters worse, a number of universities have been selling off a proportion of their student housing in response to falls in revenue during the pandemic. For example, in 2021, the University of Technology Sydney sold three buildings with 428 beds for A$95 million to Scape, the largest provider in Australia’s A$20 billion purpose-built student housing sector.
Read the full article here (11 January 2023).
