In November 2023, the City of Edinburgh Council declared a housing emergency due to record breaking numbers of homelessness, social housing shortages, and soaring private rent rates. Three years later, the picture does not appear to have drastically improved. The Edinburgh Student Housing Crisis Survey, conducted by SLURP: Students For Action On Homelessness, for the 2025/26 academic year identified worsening housing security amongst students, with 37.1 per cent of students reporting being affected by the housing crisis, and a growing minority of students having not secured a tenancy agreement.
Edinburgh’s student population of over 64,000 places significant pressure on its housing sector, with the city relying on the Private Rented Sector (PRS) significantly more than the rest of Scotland. Simultaneously, nationally Edinburgh has the lowest amount of social housing per person — with a meagre 14 per cent of social housing, in contrast with the Scottish average of 23 per cent. With supply struggling to meet demand, and the widening affordability gap, students are at a greater risk of facing over-crowding, unsuitable living conditions, and homelessness.
What is increasing in supply, however, is Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA). Over the past decade, Edinburgh has seen the amount of PBSA increase by nearly 60 per cent — with private companies owning most of these developments. But despite student housing being built across the city, securing it is not getting easier – PBSA rent increases considerably outpace inflation rendering it unaffordable for most students.
PBSAs are technically considered a form of commercial development, unlike normal residential properties, despite them acting as housing, and so are not required to meet the same criteria that regular housing developments are, including not contributing the element of affordable housing required of other developments. This creates a loophole in the planning framework that incentivises developers to favour building more PBSA, rather than other new-build developments or conversions, which poses significant problems for the broader housing market in Edinburgh.
As such, organisations such as Living Rent Edinburgh and SLURP have made calls for greater levels of transparency, advocating for Edinburgh City Council to request and publish statistics about occupancy levels within PBSA so a more complete picture of its role in Edinburgh’s housing market can be understood. Living Rent Edinburgh is currently campaigning against the number of PBSA being built in Edinburgh, drawing attention to issues such as how they do not pay business rates, and so do not put money back into the local community.
As part of Living Rent’s ‘say no to purpose built student accommodation’ campaign, they hosted a block party on Thursday 17 September outside City Chambers. They aimed to put pressure on the council to amend the city planning frameworks to de-prioritise “luxury student accommodations that no one can afford,” in favour of affordable housing. They are also conducting research to investigate more precisely the consequences of PBSA on the Edinburgh housing crisis.
Housing insecurity is known to impede both students’ academic performance and mental health. The common perception of homelessness by the public is that of ‘chronic homelessness,’ in which individuals spend extended periods of time sleeping rough (on the streets or in shelters) — despite this appearing to only characterise the experience of approximately ten percent of those experiencing homelessness in the Global North. Students unable to access suitable housing commonly resort to alternatives including sofa-surfing with friends or family, utilising hostels or short-term holiday rentals, or living with family at a ‘home address’ and commuting from hours away from their institutions- or missing in-person classes entirely.
Keeping a close eye on the picture of student housing, Lukas Asinger, a member of SLURP, described how student housing insecurity “not only impacts student general well-being, but prevents them from engaging in important school work and social activity.” He encourages anyone concerned about housing stability to know there is support available and to reach out to their university, the advice place, or SLURP.
Anyone currently studying in Edinburgh is able to support Slurp’s research efforts by completing their 26/27 annual survey on student housing in Edinburgh, which will run for six weeks and will allow for greater insight, because, as Asinger notes, “as much data as possible is needed, so that precise information can be presented to policy makers to influence substantive change in housing insecurity.”
Photo by Albane Mbow for The Student.
