At this moment, 150 students at UCL are on rent strike, collectively withholding £250,000 until their demands of a 40% rent cut are met. The average rent in UCL accommodation has risen by 56% in the last five years, with the university’s profits increasing year on year. In this time, financial support for students in the form of grants and loans has remained stagnant.
We all know London faces a housing catastrophe; the capital’s average tenant spends 72% of their total income on rent. The city is increasingly becoming nothing more than a playground for international capital, with prices continually driven up by people who see houses as investments rather than homes. UCL’s strikers, supported by campaign group UCL Cut the Rent, form part of a fight against unaffordable housing – and flagrant social cleansing – in the capital.
An explosion of housing campaigns have emerged in London in recent decades. The Radical Housing Network is comprised of local groups, including Focus E15, Sweets Way Resists and Lambeth Housing Activists. It works to highlight the struggle of living in a city where rents have reached an all-time high and social housing continues to be eradicated. The ongoing strike at UCL marks the biggest rent strike to take place in London in the last three decades. One of the hopes of the campaign is to inspire further action, both at other universities and in the private sector.
UCL claims that its prices match the private sector: a hollow argument – the university owns the properties and is largely unaffected by rising rents. Annual rent hikes are invisible in university halls, as each new crop of first-years is unaware that they are being conned into paying higher and higher sums. This academic year, UCL is set to make a “surplus” (read: profit) of over £15 million from student accommodation and it refuses to disclose what will be done with this money. Students, meanwhile, are struggling to make ends meet. Many find that their entire student loan and maintenance grand do not cover their rent. UCL is openly shirking social responsibility and this is representative of a free market mentality increasingly forcing its way into our universities.
The marketisation of higher education mirrors the destruction of social housing, with universities increasingly privileging profit over people. Students and universities have are being forced into the roles of customers and retailers. As funding for higher education is cut, universities rely ever more on their students to bring in money. At UCL, these funds are not reinvested directly into improving existing student accommodation. Instead, they will most likely go towards funding a new campus in East London – a plan that, three years ago, actively sought to demolish a council estate in Stratford and leave hundreds of residents homeless.
Universities have a responsibility to offer students genuinely affordable accommodation, and rents must be priced according to average student incomes. We are all being priced out of London; potential students are being priced out of a university education, too.
Non-payment of rent is one of the most effective ways of resisting the empty rhetoric of the housing crisis. Last year, rent strikes at UCL achieved a staggering victory: the university was forced to pay £500,000 in compensation. Rent strikes work – but the fight is only beginning.
Right now, the campaign is spreading the strike at UCL and at other London universities. By escalating the strike, we are trying to show that the collective power of people withholding their rent can – and will – bring institutions to their knees. Even more crucially, the strikers are hoping to gain support from other housing campaigns. If the university attempts to evict these 150 students, or to harass them through debt collection, they will need all the help that they can get.
The striking students challenge the same forces of marketisation as other housing campaigns in London. Rent is everyone’s problem. United, we stand the chance of fighting the stealth evictions of thousands of people.
It is vital to remember that the current housing crisis has been created by governments working in the interest of big business. If we do not take action, the social cleansing of the capital will continue to pick up speed. Support the UCL rent strikers. Build a movement with people in your neighbourhood. Join the strike, occupy, resist eviction – fight for your right to a home, and for your claim to this city.
Iida Käyhkö