Insufficient places in university residences, apartments or shared rents that are too expensive… Students in Strasbourg find themselves having to take a room in a youth hostel due to the lack of housing options for the 2024/2025 academic year.
“This morning I went back to school, tonight my only solution is to get a bed in a hostel, otherwise I’ll sleep on the streets,” explains Carla Mejean as she carries her suitcase to the reception of the HI Strasbourg 2 Rives youth hostel.
“I’ve been looking since I received the acceptance response in June, and with my limited budget of 400 euros I haven’t found anything,” the 22-year-old third-year anthropology student at the University of Strasbourg notes bitterly. Without accommodation at the end of the week, she will have to return to her parents in Nancy on weekends and fears she will have to travel back and forth more often in the near future.
The Alsatian Student Federation (AFGES) has noted a 2-3% increase in re-enrollment fees this year: 3,156 euros, this is the amount that a first-year university student who no longer lives with his parents and who is not a scholarship holder will have to pay for this 2024 school year, according to the Alsatian association.
No response from Crous
To remedy this problem, Afges is helping around forty students in Strasbourg by paying for up to 11 nights in a youth hostel until mid-October.
“We are funding 44 places for accommodation in hostels but in reality we have exceeded 400 requests for emergency accommodation,” says Chloé Hayd, president of the federation. “We can continue with this aid, but after a certain point it becomes difficult and students have nowhere to go.”
Laurène Lita-Iccia is one of the students who benefit from this temporary housing system. “I am staying with three other people who are in the same situation as me. I have contacted the Crous several times, without any response for the moment,” laments the 19-year-old first-year student of Modern Literature, who arrived from Gabon to return to school on September 10.
In Alsace, the Crous rental park (the public institution that manages catering, accommodation and student health) has 5,503 places for… 87,000 higher education students in the Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin, after the Strasbourg Academy.
Michel Deneken, rector of the University of Strasbourg, said he was “very committed to the serious issue of housing” during his annual press conference on the return to school. He did, however, point out that these difficulties are part of a “national context” of housing crisis: “It is a problem for all French people,” he noted.
Insufficient evaluation on the construction of new student accommodation
In 2022, “more than one in five graduates (that is, almost 100,000) changed schools when entering higher education,” according to a note from the Ministry of Higher Education, published at the end of 2023: 22% of them therefore have to look for accommodation at the beginning of the school year. A significant figure to which must be added students in reorientation, those more advanced in their higher education path or foreign students.
Allan Manieca received his acceptance letter to the sommelier school just a week before his return to school: “I had no choice but to come to this inn,” admits the 21-year-old wine enthusiast. “All the places in the student residences are taken, my only hope is to wait for places to become available from those who leave the course.”
In 2023, Sylvie Retailleau, Minister of Higher Education and Research, promised an increase in the number of accommodations “so that access to independent housing does not constitute an obstacle to continuing one’s studies.”
The ministry announced a stock of 240,000 social housing units for students in 2024, of which 175,000 will be managed by CROUS. The outgoing government highlights the 30,000 new Crous housing units delivered since 2017 and still promises a total of 65,000 new properties available by the end of Macron’s second five-year term. A figure that is still largely insufficient.