Contesting the financialization of student accommodation: campaigns for the right to housing in Dublin, Ireland

Abstract

Financialized student accommodation has emerged as an international asset class and is a more visible and politically contentious feature of Irish cities. In this paper, I focus on Dublin which has seen the construction of for-profit Purpose Built Student Accommodation, and rent increases, skyrocket. Contributing to, as well as advancing, debates on rental market financialization, I present changes to student housing provision tied to financialization and explore the consequences for students’ right to housing. I build my argument around qualitative research undertaken between 2019-2021, namely documentary analysis, focus groups, and key informant interviews. I explore how financialization is contested through engagement with the student housing campaign ‘Shanowen Shakedown’. I present the political outcomes of this campaign and demonstrate that whilst it achieved greater housing rights for students, students continue to battle the uneven geographies of financialization. The paper argues student accommodation is implicated in wider transformations of Dublin’s urban housing system and the ongoing financialization of the private rental sector.

Keywords:

• Dublin
• financialization
• housing movements
• student housing
• PBSA
• event
• subjects

1. Introduction

Globally, cities are being transformed by processes of financialization, involving transformation at an economic, political and social level (van der Zwan, 2014). Housing is no exception, and institutional investors are increasingly entering urban housing markets. Rolnik (2013, p. 1058) notes the ‘global U-turn in prevailing housing and urban policy agendas’, with the ‘increased use of housing as an investment asset within a globalized financial market’. This has given rise to ‘global corporate’ (Beswick et al., 2016) and ‘financialized’ landlords (August and Walks, 2018), including private equity firms, hedge funds, real estate investment trusts, and publicly listed real estate firms. Investors are increasingly interested in ‘alternative’ routes to investment in real estate as they move away from traditional office and retail sectors which have previously dominated investor interests. As such, global investors are increasingly entering urban rental markets, and the development of large-scale multi-unit residential developments of purpose-built rental housing, commonly known as ‘Build to Rent’ (BtR), has gained investor interest globally.

This paper contributes to an emerging literature on rental housing financialization (Wijburg et al., 2018) by using the example of Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA), described as having ‘trail blazed’ the financialization of the private rental sector (PRS) (Beswick et al., 2016). PBSA is large-scale student-specific purpose-built rental accommodation. It typically consists of self-contained studios or flats with private kitchens, but shared living and communal spaces, or halls of residences consisting of ensuite double bedrooms with shared living and social facilities (Reynolds, 2020). They are often in gated communities with 24/7 security and concierge services, and typically come with modern facilities including cinemas, gyms, study rooms and bowling alleys. PBSA is described as both a subclass and an antecedent of the BtR sector (Nethercote, 2020) and has gained ‘increased institutional interest at a global level’ (Newell and Marzuki, 2018, p. 523). Global investment in PBSA totalled US$17.1bn in 2018, representing a 425% increase since 2008 (Savills, 2019). Cross-border deals originating from institutional investors account for 75% of the volume of capital deployed over the last three years (Knight Frank, 2019). There is also a notable increase in activity among private equity funds, a trend which is predicted to continue (Knight Frank, 2019).

This research is located in Dublin, Ireland, where PBSA has widely penetrated national public and policy-orientated agendas over the last five years. Alongside its growing student population, Dublin has seen a boom in PBSA developed by global institutional investors (Figures 1 and 2). This was encouraged by the state through the 2017 National Student Accommodation Strategy, a key action under Ireland’s national action plan for housing and homelessness – Rebuilding Ireland. This makes Dublin a particularly unique case study, as Nakazawa (2017) notes the lack of national policies for student accommodation globally.

Figure 1. Construction of PBSA on Cork Street, Dublin 8. (Source: Authors own, 2020).

Figure 2. PBSA ‘The Tannery’, Dublin 8. (Source: Authors own, 2019).

The development of student accommodation has surged amidst the ongoing financialization of Ireland’s housing system. Ireland suffered one of the most severe housing market and economic busts of the global financial crisis (GFC) (Norris and Byrne, 2017; O’Callaghan et al., 2015), but has in recent years been represented as having recovered economically (Nowicki et al., 2019). This has been displayed through rising property prices and a growing start up and technology scene, with Dublin dubbed the ‘Silicon Valley of Europe – and the hot new place to study English’ (Victoria, 2020). Since 2013, Irish house prices have grown by 50%, while rents have increased by over 60% (Byrne, 2020). Yet as Kitchin et al., (2017) note, rising housing prices do not represent recovery, but as another phase of crisis characterised by diminishing social housing, rising rents, and increasing precarity in the PRS. The GFC accelerated the commodification and financialization of Ireland’s housing market (Lima, 2021a). Ireland is now experiencing an acute housing and homelessness crisis. The crisis is felt nationwide, and is evidenced by increased housing inequalities and exclusion, including housing shortages, soaring rents, housing insecurity, and a rise of homelessness. The effects of the crisis are evident through the example of student accommodation. A Higher Education Authority report, published in 2015, estimated a shortfall of 25,000 bed spaces for students, three-quarters of which exists in Dublin, resulting in significant pressure placed on the PRS (HEA, 2015). As a result, a growing number of global corporate landlords (Beswick et al., 2016) are entering the student accommodation market and capitalising on an undersupplied rental market. This is particularly evident in Dublin, which has seen the construction of for-profit PBSA and rent increases, skyrocket. The crisis has exaggerated the impacts of ‘Generation Rent’ and ‘Generation Stuck at Home’ (Hearne, 2020), young people who are increasingly excluded from homeownership and are forced into a precarious rental market, are prevented from moving out of the family home, or are forced into homelessness. The effects are particularly salient in Dublin, where rents have increased 12% year-on-year on average (DAFT, 2018).

Since the GFC, social movements have increasingly pushed back against financialization pressures on urban housing markets (Fields, 2017a). Ireland is at the forefront of a new wave of housing movements, campaigns and protests. Hearne (2020) notes a new housing movement has been increasingly active in Ireland since 2014, with campaigns emerging in response to crises in the PRS and the growing homelessness emergency (Hearne et al., 2018)¹. These movements have been particularly forceful in Dublin, a traditional site of activism and resistance (Gaynor, 2020). Gaynor (2020) notes the presence of 19 different grassroots housing groups across the city, in addition to less formal collectives. Activity began with small grassroots groups working incrementally to tackle the housing crisis. As these groups mobilised, a surge of building occupations occurred between 2015 and 2018, organised by the Take Back the City (TBTC) network and the Irish Housing Network (IHN) (Lima, 2021b). These activities have been accompanied by large scale protests, bringing the housing crisis to the attention of the public and government (Hearne, 2020). In October 2018, Raise the Roof, a coalition of rights movements, grassroots groups, and left-wing political parties, organised a rally attended by over 10,000 people. A further national housing demonstration was held in May 2019, which with over 15,000 attendees, was the largest to date (Hearne, 2020). Students are at the forefront of right to housing movements and continue to contest the unaffordable and exclusionary impact that financialization is having on their right to housing. By presenting empirical insights from student housing campaign Shanowen Shakedown, this research aims to bridge the gap between the financialization of housing and housing struggles. A focus on housing struggles serves as a means of grounding more abstract debates around financialization, and in particular, rental market financialization.

This research is situated in the ongoing financialization of the PRS and a context of increasing social movements in Dublin. Contributing to, as well as advancing, key debates on rental market financialization, this paper presents evidence on structural changes to student housing provision tied to financialization. In addition, it examines a unique case of student activism to contribute to understanding of how political struggles can challenge financialization. Without wishing to repeat the in-depth reviews of rental market financialization literature which appear previously in this journal (see Nethercote, 2020; Byrne, 2020; Hulse et al., 2020), I begin section two by framing this research on student accommodation in the context of rental market financialization and post-crisis housing struggles. In section three, I present the methods used in this research. I move on in section four to present the structural changes to student housing provision tied to financialization, alongside changes to national policy which encourage and facilitate the financialization of PBSA in Ireland. In section five, I explore how financialization is being contested and evaluate the success of the Shanowen Shakedown campaign. Finally, concluding thoughts and avenues for future research are presented.

2. Situating this research

The growing presence of institutional investors in urban rental markets is reflective of, and contributes to, a ‘broader paradigm shift within urban housing systems’ (Nethercote, 2020, p. 840) known as financialization. Financialization refers to ‘the increasing dominance of financial actors, markets, practices, measurements and narratives, at various scales, resulting in a structural transformation of economies, firms (including financial institutions), states and households’ (Aalbers, 2016, p. 2). Financialization is more broadly denoted as a structural shift in capitalism, whereby profit is increasingly generated ‘through financial channels rather than through trade and commodity production’ (Krippner, 2005, p. 174). Housing is no exception to these trends. Globally, exceptional amounts of global capital have been invested in housing as a means of capital accumulation.

Since the 2008 GFC, the financialization of housing, defined by Wijburg (2021, p. 1276) as the ‘increased dominance of financial markets in the housing sector’, has ‘reinforced and rescaled itself, expanding into new market segments and urban territories’. As noted elsewhere in this journal, the period following the GFC witnessed the continued growth in private renting (Kemp, 2015; Byrne, 2020). Whilst investment in the PRS has traditionally been by small-scale and ‘mom and pop’ landlords (Revington and August, 2020), driven to a large extent by buy to let mortgages (Byrne, 2020), the increasing presence of global corporate landlords in ‘post-crisis’ urban landscapes (Beswick et al., 2016) has resulted in rental housing becoming a ‘new frontier for financialization’ (Fields, 2017a, p. 589).

Despite the growing scholarship on the financialization of housing, rental market financialization remains ‘under-appreciated’ (Fields and Uffer, 2016). The focus of housing financialization has, until recently, remained on single-family or owner-occupied housing, with a particular focus on home loans, credit scoring, and mortgage securitization (Aalbers, 2016; Gotham, 2009). Previous work has also highlighted how not-for-profit housing providers have become financial actors through their involvement and reliance on private finance (Aalbers, 2016; Wainwright and Manville, 2017). Only more recently has literature focused attention on the financialization of the PRS, which is intensifying ties between local property markets and global finance (Byrne, 2020; Hulse et al., 2020; Wijburg et al., 2018; Fields, 2017a). Despite growing literature on rental market financialization, a focus on student accommodation remains limited, despite PBSA now considered a ‘mainstream asset class’ by the investment community (CBRE, 2020). Current research on student accommodation in Ireland is dominated by commercial (Knight Frank, 2017; CBRE and FAC, 2017) and public (HEA, 2015; DCC, 2019) reports, with academic literature remaining limited (see Kenna, 2011; Reynolds, 2020). Whilst the interconnected nature of PBSA and finance is mentioned in recent wider studies on the BtR sector (Nethercote, 2020) and studentification (Holton and Mouat, 2021), PBSA remains distinct from other housing sectors.

Unlike the BtR sector which is typically designed as long-term rental accommodation, PBSA offers short-term accommodation targeting transient and mobile populations. PBSA is not only reliant on a thriving student population, but it also targets, and is reliant upon, the conference and tourist market outside of term-time. The use of PBSA for these purposes is shown in an example on the website of private PBSA provider ‘Swuite’², which has three distinct sections to their website, targeting: ‘Students’, ‘Business’ and ‘Leisure’. PBSA also appears commonly on websites such as Airbnb³, Daft⁴, and similar. In another example, an investment opportunity presented by Iveragh Group, who source development opportunities for investment in the PRS, present an investment opportunity in student accommodation under the umbrella term of ‘An Exceptional Student/Aparthotel⁵ Accommodation Investment Opportunity’ (Iveragh Group, 2020). This is reflective of the ‘hotelization of housing’, with rental accommodation ‘increasingly designed to deliver convenience, flexibility, and amenity that was once associated with exclusive hotel accommodation’ (Nethercote, 2020, p. 867). Similarly, PBSA is often marketed as luxury on the websites of PBSA providers: “Montrose does student life in total luxury” (Aparto, 2020); “We offer the luxury of a hotel with the convenience of an apartment” (Swuite, 2020). The multifunctional nature of PBSA is one of its key rationales, enabling the hyper dense use of urban land in comparison to building individual apartments, and therefore maximising profit. Until recently, this type of accommodation was not subject to rent control or security of tenure regulation in Ireland, which rendered this type of investment even more attractive from an investment point of view. Despite paralleling the transition to BtR in the PRS, the inclusion of PBSA in the wider literature on BtR risks overlooking the complexities of the PBSA sector and the wider processes and implications thereof. An analysis of the PBSA sector as an independent sector is therefore integral in contributing to a wider understanding of rental market financialization.

Interest in financialization grew after the global financial downturn (Fields, 2017b). However, despite the growing focus on financialization within housing studies, only more recently has research focussed on the extent to which these processes are contested from within society, and the wider impacts thereof (Lima, 2021a; Fields, 2015; Fields, 2017b). The post-crisis period has witnessed a series of radical transformations in housing movements that suggest a reignited social movements infrastructure in Ireland (Hearne et al., 2018). These include progressive movements including national organisations and campaigners for housing rights, trade unions, political parties, and NGOs, among others (Lima, 2021b). On the more radical side, direct-action and grassroots groups have emerged, utilising confrontational tactics and forms of disruptive resistance designed to challenge norms (ibid). The crisis opened space for more radical struggles with financialization, and what García‐Lamarca (2017) terms ‘insurgent practices’: collective action aiming to “enact equality and disrupt the dominant production of space” (p. 41). Recent literature has also highlighted urban space as the nexus for financialization and radical movements and the potential for activist and grassroots movements to reimagine urban space (Fields, 2017b). Di Feliciantonio (2017) draw attention to the possibilities for social movements to create alternatives to the neoliberal model in the housing sector. Literature has highlighted growing tensions between the interests of institutional investors and the needs of renters in investor-owned rental housing (Nethercote, 2020). Of particular significance to this paper, research has also explored the renter as a political subject and the potential of such to urban social movements (Wilde, 2019). In an Irish context, research has explored the transformative potential of forms of collective action (Hearne, 2013). O’Callaghan et al., (2018) highlight, for example, how grassroots movements have contributed with relative success to introducing alternatives and models of variegated housing in Dublin. Lima (2021b) suggests that the wave of housing activism reflects the increasing demands for housing justice. Using the example of grassroots movement Shanowen Shakedown, this paper contributes understanding of the potential of social movements to reshape financialized housing markets ‘from the ground up’ (Ward and Swyngedouw, 2018).

3. Methods

This paper draws upon qualitative research conducted as part of a larger research project on the financialization of student housing. The research presented within this paper was undertaken between 2019–2021 and consisted of three key strands: documentary analysis; focus groups; and key informant interviews.

Extensive documentary analysis of grey literature occurred, including reports from large property consultants and real estate agents, websites of PBSA providers and investment funds, news media, accounts of political meetings, policy documents, and public reports, such as the National Student Accommodation Strategy. This provided a suitable starting point for analysing the status of the student accommodation sector in Ireland, as well as analysing changes to the sector over time. This also assisted in identifying key actors and patterns of investment in the sector. Media coverage also drew attention to high profile housing movements and campaigns. Documentary analysis was complemented by observations at relevant housing and PBSA industry events. These sources also identified actors for follow up interviews.

A total of 35 semi-structured interviews were conducted. To further inform understanding of the structural changes to student housing provision and the wider impacts of the financialization of the sector, I conducted 14 key informant interviews. These included: PBSA real estate professionals (5); Students’ Union (SU) officers/employees (4); employees of a national housing charity (2); an employee of the Residential Tenancies Board (1); a city planner (1); and a housing academic (1). Some participants were recruited through a gatekeeper involved in the wider project of which this data is taken. Other potential informants were contacted via email or Twitter. Purposive sampling assisted in the identification of participants that were proficient and well-informed with the research interests (Etikan et al., 2016). Consideration was taken to ensure these participants were representative of the stakeholders involved in student accommodation, including actors from across the public and private sectors. Maximum variation sampling was used to explore how student accommodation is perceived among different groups. This provided depth and richness of understanding over statistical representatives (Patton, 2002).

To understand student’s lived experiences of a financialized housing sector in Dublin, a further 21 interviews were conducted with students or alumni. Three students were interviewed twice, providing a perspective both pre- and post-COVID-19. Two focus groups were conducted with a further 13 students. Focus groups provided a space for open-ended discussion and an interactive dynamic as participants responded to each other, allowing for new themes to be introduced (Cameron, 2000). Students were a self-selecting sample recruited through an advert on social media and each student was paid €10 per hour for their time. All students and alumni had either lived or were currently living in PBSA (but had also experienced other living situations throughout their studies), and were a mixture of undergraduate, postgraduate, home and international students.

Snowballing assisted in the further recruitment of both students and other key informants. Interviews were conducted face-to-face, via video call or via telephone, depending on participant preference and ability to meet in person. Pseudonyms have been adopted in the write-up of this research.

4. The financialization of student accommodation in Dublin

The population of higher education (HE) students in Dublin has risen by 34% in the last ten years, with 74000 full time HE students − 43% of Ireland’s total HE population – studying in Dublin (Knight Frank, 2017). Dublin is home to four of Ireland’s eight publicly funded universities (Trinity College Dublin (TCD), University College Dublin, Dublin City University (DCU) and Technological University for Dublin), in addition to private institutions and English language schools. A record number of students now study English language in Dublin, with data from 2016 showing language students from 101 countries studied in Dublin that year (O’Halloran, 2017). It has been predicted that Ireland will become more attractive to international students wishing to study in an English-speaking country post Brexit. This follows the recent announcement that EU students will lose their home fee status in the UK from 2021/22 and will be unable to access government financial support. The number of full-time enrolments in HEIs in Ireland has been predicted to increase by 27% by 2030 (DES and RI, 2017).

Historically, HE students in Ireland have typically attended local universities, living in university owned and managed student ‘halls’ or in housing elsewhere in the PRS. Until recently, private sector participation in the student housing market has been limited. However, as student numbers continue to rise and students increasingly attend non-local universities, the demand for student accommodation has exceeded supply, and the provision of student accommodation in Dublin has been identified as ‘structurally undersupplied’ (Knight Frank, 2017). This is intensified by an increase in the number of international students studying in Ireland. In addition, an undersupply of housing in the wider PRS has led to increased competition and an increase in rents, resulting in students being forced out of the PRS, having to settle for poor quality housing, or experiencing homelessness.

As a result, private sector involvement in the PBSA sector in Ireland is now commonplace. Industry professionals interviewed in this research outlined two main ways the PBSA market now operates. Firstly, PBSA may be invested in, developed and manged solely by private sector actors, either by one party or through partnerships with multiple specialist actors. This accommodation acts independently and is not formally associated with any one university, known as ‘Direct Let’. Providers who control all elements including developing, letting, and managing PBSA schemes typically achieve stronger yields than schemes managed by multiple (CBRE and FAC, 2017). Secondly, universities may outsource their student accommodation provision to private PBSA companies, through joint venture agreements or nomination agreements. Joint venture agreements are business arrangements in which two or more parties pool their resources together for the purpose of developing student accommodation. Nomination agreements are entered into between universities and private accommodation providers whereby universities bulk-let rooms in private PBSA to let to their students directly. The agreement is to nominate a minimum number of students into the accommodation each year and for an agreed period in return for a level of control by the university on rents and some operational matters (Harper Macleod, 2015). For example, TCD advertises rooms for rent in private PBSA ‘Kavanagh Court’⁶ and ‘Binary Hub’⁷. Quotes from industry professionals demonstrate changes to the market:

“The [Irish] market’s really interesting, because of the downturn and the GFC none of the universities have really outsourced anything before, they’ve had a preference to do it themselves. But now you’re seeing the housing market come back and recover so comparative housing prices and rental in Dublin have gone through the roof because you’ve got all the big tech companies coming in, so the homes that the students used to have are all taken up or being sold because rental prices have gone up. So there’s been an explosion of [private] PBSA come into that market”. (Founder & Chief Executive Officer of student accommodation consultancy company)

“The reason you’re seeing these partnerships is universities are saying, well I have a limited amount of funding to invest in new capital projects. Typically, the universities who do these projects [partnerships with private student accommodation providers] look at their estate and say, well, I would rather put that money into teaching and research facilities. And I would see that this is the one area that I can outsource and sometimes the way that the economics of the transaction will work is that the university will actually get paid by the private sector for that opportunity”. (Founder & Managing Director of student Accommodation consultancy company)

The price of PBSA in Dublin city centre is on average €250 a week (DCC, 2019). In ‘Heyday Student Living’ in The Liberties area of Dublin, prices range from €259-305 a week (Heyday Student Living, 2020). This has created an exclusionary landscape where many students are being forced out of the city, forced to commute long hours from outside of Dublin. Others rely on employment to pay for their accommodation, resulting in poor university attendance (USI, 2017). Much PBSA is targeted at international students who are deemed to constitute an economically privileged group (Malet Calvo, 2018). In one example, PBSA Scape in Dublin 8, has a dedicated section of its website in Mandarin. A recent report found that 79% of students living in private PBSA were international students (DCC, 2019). Commercial reports further highlight the presence of international students as enhancing the need for PBSA (CBRE and FAC, 2017). However, research by Fang and van Liempt (2020) on international students’ housing experiences states that assuming all international students are privileged insufficiently captures their full range of housing experiences, with many living involuntarily in conditions of stress, instability and insecurity. The assumption that all international students can afford to live comfortably in luxury PBSA therefore overlooks the complexities of the international student body.

Supporting Revington & August’s (2020) study of the financialization of student housing in Canada, finance-driven demand for an investment product has propelled the development of PBSA in Dublin. However, the interaction of global finance with national policy contexts, including government incentives, is encouraging the speed, scale and features of PBSA development. The state has played an active role in encouraging and facilitating the financialization of PBSA in Ireland (Table 1). The government first encouraged the development of PBSA through Section 50 of the Finance Act 1999, which introduced tax incentives to encourage private investment and development in urban areas, with a scheme aimed at student accommodation. Student organisations were involved in this change, with Ireland’s National SU, the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), placing pressure on the government to provide additional accommodation and improve the current quality of private rental accommodation for students (Kenna, 2011). Though the scheme ended in 2006, it paved the way for the development of PBSA in Ireland.

Table 1. Timeline of government policies and guidelines encouraging and facilitating the development of PBSA.

1999	Section 50 of Finance Act 1999 – Provided capital expenditure relief for landlords of student accommodation. Expenditure incurred on student rental accommodation could be set against the rental income from the property and against other Irish rental income thus reducing the taxable income of the person incurring the expenditure. The qualifying period applied up to 31 December 2006, although under certain circumstances the qualifying period could be further extended to 31 July 2008.
2016	Rebuilding Ireland, an Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness launched. Included objectives to support greater provision of student accommodation.
July 2016	Circular released by Department of Housing permitting tourism use of PBSA outside of term time.
October 2016	Dublin City Development Plan (2016-2022) launched. Includes guidelines for the development of PBSA.
July 2017	National Student Accommodation Strategy launched.
July 2017	A ‘fast-track’ planning process is introduced. Strategic Housing Developments (SHD) allow planning applications of more than 200 plus student bed spaces to be made directly to Ireland’s national planning board, An Bord Pleanála, skipping local planning stage.
July 2017	Housing Finance Agency can now lend finance to HEIs for student accommodation – Section 51 of the Planning and Development (Housing) and Residential Tenancies Act 2016 amended the Housing Finance Agency Act 1981 to enable the Housing Finance Agency (HFA) to lend to Institutes of Higher Education for the provision or management of student accommodation, including the acquisition of land for this purpose.
March 2018	‘Design Standards for New Apartments – Guidelines for Planning Authorities’ issued. Includes planning guidelines for the development of PBSA.
July 2018	Height restrictions are lifted on new city buildings, allowing for higher density building.
July 2019	Changes to legislation brings Student Specific Accommodation under the jurisdiction of the Residential Tenancies Board. Provides rights and responsibility to Landlords, Tenants and Licencees under the Residential Tenancies Act (as amended). Also brings PBSA under rent cap legislation, preventing rents of PBSA in Rent Pressure Zones from rising more than 4% per annum.

For a decade, there was limited policy attention directed towards student accommodation. However, since the GFC, the state has taken on a market-maker role in Ireland – ‘reshaping regulation and intervening in markets in order to create the conditions for financialisation to occur’ (Çelik, 2021, p. 4). In 2017, Ireland’s National Student Accommodation Strategy was launched. Central to the strategy was increasing the supply of PBSA via private sector development to reduce the demand for accommodation in the wider PRS. Through the strategy, the state created the conditions for the financialization of student housing (Aalbers, 2016). In assuming a market-maker role, the state encourages investors and developers to enter the market by enabling the emergence of the built environment as a profitable circuit for capital investment (Çelik, 2021). To achieve this, development of PBSA was accelerated by a fast-track planning process, known as Strategic Housing Developments, introduced in July 2017. This permits planning applications for PBSA of more than 200 bed spaces to skip local planning stage and go directly to Ireland’s national planning board, An Bord Pleanála. This has enabled the development of PBSA on a mass scale. The state is far from a ‘passive victim of financialization’ (Yeşilbağ, 2020, p. 538), but has instead driven financialization (Lai, 2018) as a response to the significant undersupply of student accommodation. The role of the state and a financialized student accommodation market are therefore intrinsically woven.

5. Contesting financialization

5.1. Shanowen Shakedown: Politicizing student accommodation

As student accommodation has become a more dominant feature of Dublin’s urban landscape, it is increasingly politicised and contested. Amidst an acute student housing crisis, a new wave of student housing campaigns has emerged across Ireland. One of the most momentous is Shanowen Shakedown, a student-led campaign which emerged in March 2018 due to proposed rent increases in private PBSA Shanowen Square, a 3-minute walk from DCU. It was announced that rent for Shanowen Square accommodation would be rising by 27% for the upcoming academic year, following year-on-year rent increases. The campaign began on social media using hashtag activism (Yang, 2016), where the hashtag #BoycottShanowen surfaced on Twitter and received significant engagement nationally. Following this, a petition was circulated which called for Shanowen residences and another PBSA provider, Gateway Student Village, who had also imposed large rent increases, to revoke their prices for the upcoming academic year. The petition received over ten thousand signatures and the campaign was supported by DCU SU. The campaign also aimed to create awareness of the lack of security and protection for students living in PBSA.

The involvement of DCU SU marked a political shift in the strategy of the campaign, allowing it to ‘scale-up’ (Wilde, 2019) beyond social media, and instead utilise non-violent direct and confrontational approaches as political action (Lima, 2021b). One of the main organisers of Shanowen Shakedown describes a meeting that was held a day after they met with a SU president, who suggested taking political action:

“So we called a town hall meeting for the next day, which was the 28^th of March, and it was in the biggest lecture hall in DCU, so it felt pretty serious at the time. We went in and it was just a chance for people to speak their feelings, people were crying and they were shouting and they’re like, ‘I can’t come back here next year, I’ll have to defer the year, something needs to be done’”. (Roisin, DCU graduate, key organiser of Shanowen Shakedown).

With support from DCU SU, the campaign approached the owners of Shanowen residences, but received no engagement: “we weren’t getting responses from them at all” (Roisin, DCU graduate, key organiser of Shanowen Shakedown). This highlights how financialization allows powerful actors to be “invisible” to those on the ground (Clapp, 2014, p. 800), complicating efforts to confront actors and hold them accountable for the consequences of their actions (Fields, 2015; García‐Lamarca and Kaika, 2016). Lack of engagement from the PSBA provider led to a protest the following day, where students marched from the campus of DCU to Shanowen residences, chanting and displaying banners (Figures 3 and 4). The initial impact of the students’ actions was made apparent the following day when it was discussed in Irish parliament, the Dáil.

Figure 3. Banners used during Shanowen Shakedown. (Source: Interview participant).

Figure 4. Student protest during Shanowen Shakedown. (Source: Interview participant).

The following week, on 5^th April 2018, students staged a march from DCU to Shanowen Square and held a sleep-out outside overnight. The immediate response to this action was highly positive. The campaign received national and international press coverage (Figure 5), local politicians engaged with the campaign and made statements denouncing the rent increases, and the campaign was publicly supported by DCU’s university president. The following week, on 17^th April, the group held their third protest outside Irish parliament. The protest was supported by Take Back Trinity, a group of students from TCD who have also staged their own housing campaigns. The announcement of price increases in student accommodation elsewhere in Ireland, for example at University College Cork (UCC) and the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG), further added to the momentum of the campaign. Despite emerging as a small, localised campaign, it was at this point during Shanowen Shakedown that the collective turnout of students from across Ireland’s universities, in addition to the wider support they had received, transformed the campaign into a national movement. Here, the campaign once again ‘scaled-up’ (Wilde, 2019).

Figure 5. National news media covering student sleepout during Shanowen Shakedown. (Source: Interview participant).

Since Shanowen Shakedown, there has been a resurgence of actions from students contesting the financialization of student accommodation. Outside of Dublin, a month on from Shanowen Shakedown, NUIG students protested a planned rent increase of 18% by private provider ‘Cúirt na Coiribe’. Students, supported by the university SU, protested outside the accommodation provider, taking on the name #CúirtShakedown – a conscious parallel with #ShanowenShakedown. In February 2020, student protests were also held at university campuses nationwide after several institutions revealed plans to increase rents in university owned accommodation. As a result of student’s actions, DCU and Maynooth University announced they were to reverse their plan to increase the cost of on-campus accommodation for September 2020. In May 2020, the USI voted to back students working to set up a tenants’ union calling for a ban on evictions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and calling for an 18-month rent freeze for students. The move marks a radical approach to student activism in the aftermath of the pandemic.

5.2. Evaluating success

Shanowen Shakedown emerged as part of a new set of grassroots groups and movements that respond with direct action to the housing crisis. These movements are used as instruments to put pressure on decision makers. The campaign did not achieve its aim of influencing the private PBSA providers to revoke their rent increases for the following academic year. However, it had a politicizing effect, resulting in legislative changes that limited future rent increases and increased the protections provided to students living in PBSA. A year on from the campaign, student accommodation was included in Dublin’s Rent Pressure Zones. This led to the introduction of rent caps to both publicly and privately owned PBSA, which prevent rents increasing by more than 4% a year. An amendment to the Residential Tenancies Act also allowed students to avail of support from the Residential Tenancies Board, which assists in resolving disputes between landlords, tenants and third parties, of which students living in student-specific accommodation were previously excluded.

Shanowen Shakedown can be understood as Badiou’s (2005, p.xii) conceptualisation of an ‘Event’ – a ‘type of rupture which opens up truths’ and disrupts the current situation. More specifically, an Event is a ‘rupture of an undecidable, general situation’ (the financialization of student housing), ‘by a unique and singularizing intervention’ (the Shanowen Shakedown campaign) (Calcagno, 2008, p. 1054). Badiou (2005) suggests an Event occurs when the excluded (in this case, students) appears on the social scene, suddenly and drastically, rupturing the appearance of normality (McLaverty-Robinson, 2014). In positioning Shanowen Shakedown as an Event, students therefore represent Badiou’s notion of political ‘subjects’. Subjects are those who make visible certain Events by working to construct and mobilise a particular ‘Truth’ they are working to bring into a given ‘world’. Badiou suggests that truth is produced from practice and struggle (McLaverty-Robinson, 2014). But what distinguishes Events from other political actions is the concept of subjects as organised action, who create truths only by making decisive decisions and interventions. This separates Shanowen Shakedown from the ‘messiness’ of other political actions (Paccoud, 2019). Subjects evolve ‘out of a moment of decision, a moment that accommodates the idea that other potential happenings are being denied and that the pathway to the desired happening is actualised without certainty of outcome’ (Dewsbury, 2007, p. 449). Shanowen Shakedown gave students a visible identity within an increasingly exclusionary housing landscape, making visible the truth of student’s everyday lived experiences which had so far been overlooked by the state. This affirmation of equality is key to Badiou’s framing of an event (Paccoud, 2019).

It is the naming of an Event which is truly transformational. Naming Shanowen Shakedown departed the Event from the previous political actions of students. Choosing to focus specifically on the rent increases in the Shanowen residences, rather than attempting to contend with the host of related problems facing students in the wider housing crisis, enabled the campaign to acquire meaning. This is a procedure Badiou calls subjectivation – ‘becoming subject’ (Calcagno, 2008). Subjects are therefore a product of Events, and through which a Truth unfolds.

Shanowen Shakedown created a self-identifying political subjectivity (Wilde, 2019). Badiou recognises the collective identity of subjects is central to the framing of an Event: “it thus includes all of the actors (individuals, institutions, organisations, etc.) which drive the construction of a truth in a particular world” (Paccoud, 2019, p. 345). Badiou recognises that actions carried out collectively will have greater impact and bring about more forceful change than those carried out individually (Calcagno, 2008). Beyond positioning students as subjects, the support Shanowen Shakedown received from actors outside of the student body, including from housing campaign groups and political parties, was central to the production of the Event and its political subjects. The collective identity of Shanowen Shakedown was key to enabling the campaign to scale-up beyond a call for action and result in a transformation of the original situation (Bassett, 2008).

Shanowen Shakedown created a narrative which established political actors have been unable to ignore. The political force of students was recognised by Ireland’s then Housing Minister, who stated: “We need to be aware of the political force we have unleashed with students because they have asked for something and they have got it” (Murphy, in USI, 2019). Whilst students have long been involved in social movements, Shanowen Shakedown was the Event which paved the way for change – “That is the power of the event. In the movement of their taking place, event causes their situations to bend” (Sandhya, 2020, p. 23).

Events involve a truth process which involve the naming of the event, the production of new subjectivities, and a transformation of the original situation (Bassett, 2008). However, Shanowen Shakedown should not be seen purely in instrumental terms (Taylor and van Dyke, 2007). Successful movements are often those with very specific purposes which often dissipate when they reach their goals (Lima, 2021a). Whilst the Event only exists to disappear, it opens up a new sequence of political change that exploits the possibilities revealed by the Event. Significantly, Shanowen Shakedown and other student movements have brought the student housing crisis to national and political attention. The campaign achieved maximal intensity of appearance (Badiou, 2005) and rendered the excluded part visible. Whilst the campaign did not achieve its overarching aim of influencing the private PBSA providers to revoke their rent increases, this paper argues the campaign achieved a greater success in achieving greater housing rights for students. Dikeç & Swyngedouw (2017) differentiate between social movements that are centred on one or more contentious issues and can be effective in influencing policy change, and political movements that aspire towards a wider transformation of the instituted order and practices of everyday life. As shown through the example of Shanowen Shakedown, student housing movements can be considered both a moment of interruption (Dikeç and Swyngedouw, 2017, p. 2) and part of wider issue-based movements. Shanowen Shakedown was ‘distinct from, yet articulating with, urban social movements while at the same time endeavouring to change institutional and governance arrangements’ (Dikeç and Swyngedouw, 2017, p. 4).

Shanowen Shakedown contributed to the increased debate on the commodification of housing, demanding an inclusive national policy. It emerged as a ‘brief irruption, marked by the unexpected emergence of new subjects, unknown within the existing situation, and marking a radical break with that situation’ (Bassett, p. 906). Students’ pursuit of equality brought about significant changes to their housing rights. However, financial accumulation predicated on housing is proceeding, and the unequal impacts of financialization continue to materialise. Post the Event described here, students remain political subjects, and the demands of students extend beyond Shanowen Shakedown. Many involved in student movements form part of wider national housing movements, such as Take Back the City and Raise the Roof, which continue to articulate alternative housing policies and build a public census around the right to housing in Ireland (Hearne, 2020). Whilst Shanowen Shakedown achieved success in part, students continue to battle the uneven geographies of the ongoing financialization of student accommodation. Housing students remains a significant topic in housing politics.

6. Conclusion

This paper has contributed to an emerging literature on rental market financialization through the example of Purpose Built Student Accommodation. The paper’s contribution is twofold. First, it presents evidence on structural changes to student housing provision tied to financialization and highlights the close relationship between the state and institutional investors. Second, the paper bridges the gap between the financialization of housing and housing struggles through an analysis of student housing campaign Shanowen Shakedown. In doing so, the paper highlights the lived experiences of students amidst an acute housing crisis and presents the political outcomes of this right to housing movement under the pressure of financialization. Through an analysis of Shanowen Shakedown, this paper demonstrates how activism has the capacity to have a significant impact on housing rights.

Encouraged by state strategy, Dublin’s student accommodation landscape has been transformed by the investment imperatives of institutional investors. The Irish Government has played a central role in facilitating the financialization of student accommodation and has shaped the scale and speed of local investment. Increased reliance on the provision of student accommodation by the private sector has resulted in the creation of a luxury student accommodation market, reflective of the ‘hotelization’ of rental housing more widely in the PRS (Nethercote, 2020).

This paper also demonstrates how student accommodation has become a site of contested space. A resurgence of student activism has emerged as a response to the unaffordable and exclusionary impact that the financialization of student accommodation is having on their right to housing. Studentification literature has previously highlighted the displacement of locals from university locations due to increased populations of students. However, this paper argues that the financialization of PBSA is resulting in displacement within the student body itself, as students from lower-economic backgrounds are excluded from the luxury residences of the city (Reynolds, 2020). The transformation of Dublin’s student accommodation landscape is implicated in wider transformations of Dublin’s urban housing system and the ongoing financialization of the PRS.

At the time of writing, the COVID-19 pandemic has raised questions over the future of the student accommodation sector. During the pandemic, PBSA in Ireland was granted temporary change-of-use permission allowing it to be used as short term accommodation for the wider lettings market during term time, which previously was only permitted outside of term. Could this change of use be a sign of the future strategies of PBSA providers? The underrepresentation of student accommodation within wider literature on rental market financialization warrants the need for future research to explore the opportunities, risks and broader impacts of PBSA. Future research should explore the local impacts of the financialization of student accommodation on local housing markets and communities, building upon research by Revington & August (2020) in a Canadian context.

The arguments presented within this paper are also relevant to an international audience given global concerns about the ongoing commodification of housing and the violation of housing rights. Globally, activists are reinvigorating housing politics. Whilst Shanowen Shakedown did not immediately change financial strategies, it resulted in legislative changes that limited future rent increases and increased the protections provided to students in PBSA. Future research should be encouraged to explore the potential for social movements to change the financial landscape, and further investigate the interwoven relationship between institutional investors and the state. This would contribute to further understanding of how political struggles can challenge financialization.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr Özlem Çelik for organising this special issue and for providing comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. I would also like to thank Professor Katherine Brickell, Dr Oli Mould, and Dr Dáithí Downey for their useful comments. Thank you also to the anonymous peer reviewers for their helpful suggestions which strengthened this paper, and to Professor Hal Pawson for his encouraging editorial guidance. Finally, I would like to thank the participants of this research for their insightful discussions and observations. Any errors are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Alice Reynolds is a Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London, researching the financialization of student accommodation in Dublin.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by an ESRC South East Network for Social Sciences (SeNSS) studentship, Reference number: ES/P00072X/1.

Notes

1 See Hearne (2020, p.193) for a timeline of right to housing campaigns/protests in Ireland between 2014-2019.

2 https://swuite.com/

3 https://www.airbnb.co.uk

4 https://www.daft.ie/

5 Aparthotels are serviced apartment complexes that use a hotel-style booking system. Alongside PBSA, the development of Aparthotels is dominating Dublin’s urban development.

6 Kavanagh Court was developed by a joint venture agreement between Global Student Accommodation (GSA) and Harrison Street Real Estate Capital but is now owned solely by GSA.

7 Binary Hub is owned by Hines.