Quick-buck landlords are leaving students in the lurch

President of GMIT Students’ Union has warned short-term lettings websites, such as Airbnb, are a major threat to student life in Galway.

As this year’s crop of first year students scramble to find accommodation in the city, Aaron Burke said their chances are severely scuppered by landlords looking to make a quick buck.

“Online platforms for short-term lets are killing Galway,” said Mr Burke. “When they weren’t around, there was no accommodation crisis.”

A considerable number of students have found themselves having to vacate properties in the private rental sector, replaced by tourists and short-stay visitors to the city, explained Mr Burke.

“Landlords find that they are making the same in a weekend from these short-term lets than they would in a month from students.

“I’ve heard from students who had to leave their rental accommodation over the summer, just because the landlord will make more in the one week of Race Week that they would by having them there all summer,” he said.

Mr Burke believed this had the potential to damage Galway’s image as a student-friendly city and said the only way to tackle the problem was for the Government to legislate against what he termed “long-term short-term lettings”.

“The way they do it in other countries is they limit the landlords so they can only do this for three months per year.

“If we can narrow down the problem so it just happens in summer, then we won’t have an issue,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mr Burke has joined his counterpart from NUI Galway’s Students’ Union to tackle the growth of unaffordable “luxury student accommodation”.

■ For more on this story, see the print edition of the Connacht Tribune.

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