British universities have a hidden problem with student homelessness, according to researchers. Lucy Hodges investigates the phenomenon and asks what can be done to help

British universities have a hidden problem with student homelessness, according to researchers. What can be done?

When a senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University carried out research into how many students were without a home, he was astonished to find 27 undergraduates in one department were either homeless or threatened with it.
“We thought we might get 10 students answering our survey, but we got 27 in total,” he says. “I would imagine that is the tip of an iceberg because most people don’t respond to the kind of email we sent out.”

Students were sleeping on sofas or floors, sharing with friends or relations, or housed in hostels or local council emergency accommodation, according to the survey conducted by Patrick Mulrenan, a senior lecturer in community development at London Met, with colleagues Simon Cox and Julia Atkins. He was shocked by the scale of the problem and by students’ experiences of being homeless.

“We found that the students didn’t want to talk about it and almost all of them cried in their interviews,” he says.

The researchers carried out 11 in-depth interviews and spoke to five students in a focus group. None of the students had approached the university about being homeless, according to Mulrenan. “They were too embarrassed and they didn’t think the university would be able to help them.”

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