When I first moved to Glasgow from Canada, I lived in a flat with four Hungarian students. I was 21 years old and in a new country for the first time. Situated on the top floor of a tenement in Finnieston, this flat is what I think of when I think of student accommodation.

Entering was like walking into a fun house. All of the floors sloped at a 45 degree angle towards a central support beam that ran through the hallway. Surveyors came by to check it out once. “It’s safe but I wouldn’t want my daughter living here,” one said.

Cracks in the walls had been filled with spray foam. “We had wasps before you moved in,” my friend Nora told me. Builders renovating a restaurant unit below kept leaving the close door open. Pigeons began nesting on our doormat. The vicious beasts would swoop aggressively at my head while I fumbled with my keys. I took to leaving piles of sticks at all levels of the stairs to swat about in self-defence. Oh, and there were mice too (obviously).

plans for an 18-storey student block on Renfield Street in GlasgowThere are plans for an 18-storey student block on Renfield Street in Glasgow (Image: free)

It certainly wasn’t The Ritz, but we felt a sense of freedom living there. We would pile all the furniture into one of the smaller bedrooms and host parties with my friends’ entire university class. We could come and go as we pleased. Friends visiting from abroad were always welcome to crash. And it cost us each less than £300 a month in digs.

I wonder if this experience (I call it character building) is why I loathe the thought of purpose built student accommodation so much? It just feels so soulless, so clinical. It’s the McDonaldization of the student experience: accessible to a wider range of people but devoid of creativity. What’s more, the private ones charge per week what I paid for a month.

Every morning I read about a new mega block of student flats getting approved in Glasgow and shudder. The former Archaos nightclub building (and current site of Tam Shepherds) on Queen Street could be almost 200 student flats.

Another 200 student flats are proposed for Osborne Street. These are just the small ones. On Bath Street, 551 student flats. Six storeys worth of them on St George’s Road. An 18-storey student block on Renfield Street. Nearly 1,000 student beds at Central Quay. The former M&S on Sauchiehall Street? Student flats. The charred remains of the O2 ABC? Student flats. There are around 20 developments in the pipeline for purpose-built student accommodation in Glasgow that could create more than 5,000 beds.

It's a scene repeated across many parts of Scotland but it's too much. Why is a transient population that doesn’t pay council tax getting so many places to live when the people who actually live here get hee-haw? When the steam stops coming out of my ears and I have stopped stamping my feet, common sense prevails. The cold hard reality sinks in. If we are to fix Glasgow’s many, many missing teeth, we have to go private. And sadly, this is what the developers want to build.

The build-to-rent boom was allegedly snuffed out by the Scottish Government’s rent cap (although at more than £1,200 for a 486 sq ft one-bedroom in some of these new buildings I think developers at it). Many of them decided to change tack and build student flats instead. Their decisions were backed up by a Savills report that claimed the city was short 22,000 student beds.

Like anything with numbers, I take this with a pinch of salt. Scenes of students queuing outside accommodation offices or being housed in cities miles away happened in 2022 but didn't appear to occur last year. Student statistics are incredibly fickle. Strict immigration policies that ban international students from bringing their families over to the UK caused a drop in numbers in England, but Scotland appears to be bucking the trend.

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Between 2021 and 2022, net migration into Scotland more than doubled according to figures released by the National Records of Scotland last month. The rise was attributed to an increase in international students from outside the EU coming here to study. And they will need somewhere to live.

Now, I would rather see a flood of mid-market or social rent flats going up in the city centre, especially during the housing crisis which The Herald has shone a light on in our recent series. There are more than 7,000 people living in temporary accommodation in the city. But we’re desperate. The city is on its knees. This week, the Scottish Government released an interactive map of the country’s vacant and derelict land. Greater Glasgow has more spots than a pair of leopard print trousers.

I find student accommodation inherently annoying but my gut tells me that this will be good for the city. An influx of students could inject some much-needed life. It’s thousands more people that could help plug a shortfall of part time workers in retail and hospitality. It’s more people to spend money in shops, restaurants and cafes. It’s also a way of returning vacant land and buildings into use. If students are housed in specific accommodations, it potentially means thousands of people removed from Glasgow’s highly competitive rental market. In an ideal world, families would be able to take over flats previously occupied by multiple students.

There are caveats to this working, however. There needs to be enough social services in the city to cater to an influx of new residents like dental practices and GPs. We don’t want freshers' flu triggering the collapse of the four or five nearby surgeries.

Student blocks need to incorporate the wider community. They can’t just be a door on a street. Buildings need to interact with their areas. A decent example of this is the The Vita Group’s plans to turn the bottom floor of the proposed O2 ABC development into a public food hall filled with “concept” restaurants. The Collegelands Park development in Calton is set to feature a two-and-a-half-acre park with a “community-led arts facility”. The recently completed Social Hub in Candelriggs has a restaurant and coworking facilities. Good, good and good.

Student flats are planned for the former Sauchiehall Street M&SStudent flats are planned for the former Sauchiehall Street M&S (Image: free)

Lastly, these big boring looking boxes need to be future proof. If the Chinese government decides it doesn’t want students coming here any longer it’s game over. Purpose built student accommodation should be designed in a way where it can be converted into a hotel or build-to-rent if student demand disappears. If not, we could end up with an even more desolate city centre than we have at the moment.

I will never jump for joy at the weekly student block planning approval, but I am trying desperately hard not to hate it so much. The greater good, I keep telling myself. No longer will students need to live among rats and pigeons, I say. And at the end of the day, I’ll be amazed if even half of these things get built.

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