Par Lea Giandomenico
Published on 3 Sep 23 at 20:18 See my news Follow News Places in CROUS accommodation are expensive, and many scholarship students are refused. (©Jean-Paul BARBIER/La Manche Press)
“URGENT: I am looking for accommodation in Clermont-Ferrand, budget 370 euros max”; “I am looking (very) urgently for accommodation in the city center of Toulouse”; “if one of you frees up an apartment in Paris or in the western suburbs in the next few days or weeks, you would save my life, I am in total despair”…
In scrollant on Facebook groups of students and self-help discussions to find accommodation, messages of despair like these are parading. The start of the school year is not very far away, but hundreds of young people have still not found a home. A big source of stress, to add to an already scary start to the university year.
Maëlle, Louison, Emma and Alban agreed to tell actu.fr their apartment search galleys.
Unlucky scholarship holders with the Crous
Emma, until then a student in Grenoble, arrives in Paris on September 4, 2023, for a final year of master’s degree at Dauphine University.
The 24-year-old takes it early. From the month of May, she gets down to her mission, gently at first, since she is still in Germany, to finish her semester of studies. Then more assiduously in June, when applications for Crous accommodation open. A tier 4 scholarship holder, Emma doesn’t worry too much. However, she is refused at each wave of admission, she confides toactu.fr.
Maëlle, who is entering her fifth year of study at INSA Rennes (an engineering school) at the end of September, has also stuck to the four admission phases of the Crous. “Each time, my wishes were denied, and the next day I had to make them again. It lasted from June to mid-July, ”explains this level 0 bis scholarship holder, who was looking for a studio at the start. And who ended up getting a 9m² room further from the city center during the complementary phase.
Nearly 200 requests in the summer
For his part, Alban* is not too worried at the start of the summer. He has a plan for an apartment with an agency, through a friend who is leaving soon. “At the end of July, the agency gave me a false plan: they had already found someone else…”, laments the young man who is also entering a master’s degree at INSA Rennes. August is already here, and Alban has no home for the start of the school year.
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I registered on all the Facebook groups of classified ads for students, and I ended up downloading Jinka, an application that aggregates all the ads from many different sites (Leboncoin, Se Loger, agency sites, etc.) . I watched regularly. I found some reliable ads, but each time they disappear in a very short time.
AlbanStudent at INSA Rennes
On Leboncoin, he sends nearly 30 messages, most of the time unanswered. “The owners had too many requests, some were even renting just by the week, and the serious ads don’t stay online for long…”, explains the 23-year-old student.
For her part, in parallel with her requests to the Crous, Emma multiplies the requests for studios, or in residences, from the end of June. “The residences were already full, or else they didn’t answer me because there were too many requests. In addition, I couldn’t make visits immediately since I was looking from Germany, as I was finishing my semester of studies abroad there, so other files passed me in front of me, ”she tells us.
In total (counting all agencies and ad platforms) Emma sends close to 200 requests and spends about four hours a day all summer on his research. Alban also spends a good part of his summer with his nose glued to his phone, and to the many Jinka notifications he receives. For her part, Maëlle spends weeks permanently connected to the Crous site during the application phases.
Complicated remote searches
Inevitably, on Leboncoin, Se Loger, and especially on the Facebook groups where Alban does his research, there are many scams. “I was asked for deposits of 450 euros to book the accommodation, even before the visit, I discussed with so-called owners on WhatsApp who asked me a lot of parts, and a transfer…” recalls the future engineer.
Remote research is frequent – since students move around a lot – and complicates things a lot. Maëlle, on an internship in Spain, is also struggling because of this. Alban, on an internship in Toulouse, is far from Rennes during the summer: it’s also complicated for him to go back and forth. He makes a few video visits, but inevitably makes a less good impression in front of the people who visit on site.
Students forced to sacrifice
Faced with these difficulties, Emma, Alban, and Maëlle lower their criteria. Emma, who was looking for accommodation alone, “because my last roommate didn’t go very well”, resolves to look at the ads for shared apartments, faced with the exorbitant prices of studios or one-bedroom apartments.
Same story with Louison, 21, who is starting a master 1 in an engineering school. “I was looking alone, but I realized that it’s impossible to find something affordable in these conditions,” he explains to‘actu.fr.
For Emma and Alban, these adjustments mainly involve an increase in their price range. “I was looking for something around 600 or 700 euros and I pushed for 850 euros. For that price, I found 22 to 25 m². So I plan to to find a job to cover these costs”, explains the young woman, who does not have much choice in the face of Parisian rents.
Louison also has a tight budget. He noticed that all the student residences he saw advertisements for in Rennes cost more than 600 euros. “Some specialize in the high end. But I can’t go for this kind of accommodation: it’s complicated financially, I give a few lessons alongside my studies and I have a student loan on my back, so I can’t go beyond 400 euros per month,” he explains.
Big anxiety
For all these young people, often already a little stressed as a new year of study approaches, unsuccessful searches for accommodation are a source of enormous anxiety. Maëlle, on an internship in Spain in July-August, experiences “hyper stressful” moments when she is refused for her Crous requests.
Emma, who spent her summer on ad sites, has to reconcile her research with her end-of-year exams, which last until early August in Germany. “It was becoming obsessiveI had trouble sleeping on certain nights when all I thought about was that,” she confides to us.
The day before yesterday, I went to see a friend and felt guilty for ‘wasting time’ during which I was not looking for an apartment.
EmmaFuture student in Paris
To top it off, the agencies, and even the owners, are sometimes very demanding on the documents to be provided for the file, and the conditions are not always accessible to each student.
Sometimes even discriminatory criteria, when it takes two guarantors who provide two months’ rent, or even more, as a deposit. “I’m lucky, I have two guarantors, but they can’t provide four times the Parisian rent, so obviously it’s a hindrance for some owners,” according to Emma. Louison abounds: “I noticed that the studies that we do, where our sex plays a lot: the owners sometimes ask to rent to girls. The guarantor is also important”.
“I’m going to sleep in my car while I wait”
Faced with these difficulties, these students consider last resort solutions, in desperation. During the summer, Emma even imagines give up his studieswhen she is accepted in the formation that she likes.
As I was also taking a master’s in Grenoble, where it was easier for me to find accommodation, I thought about giving up my master’s year in Paris.
EmmaFuture student at Dauphine
Luckily, Emma’s friends reason with her, telling her there was no way she was going to give up. “I have a friend who lives in Nanterre and who therefore offered to put me up for a month at the start of the school year, so that I could make visits, to help me out,” reassures the young woman.
Other students are considering the TGV Max subscription solution, to travel back and forth by train between their place of study and their parents. With sometimes four hours of journeys per day, the solution is far from ideal. Maëlle, who begins her year in Rennes at the end of September, thought of living for a while with her sister in Laval (Mayenne), and going back and forth by train (45 minutes from one station to another), before leaving be accepted in its 9m².
Another student tells us not to worry too much about still not finding anything with a fallback solution. When we ask him which one, he replies: “I’m going to sleep in my car, the time to find it. »
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