University of Tasmania buys property, demountables to ease students’ housing woes

UPDATED: The University of Tasmania has lodged a development application to place demountable buildings to provide 180 students with somewhere to live.

Student accomodation on College Rd where the University of Tasmania will build extra accomodation for students.

THE University of Tasmania has lodged a development application to place demountable buildings on land near Christ College to provide 180 students with somewhere to live.

It has also purchased a property in Hobart’s CBD with enough room to house 99 students after attracting criticism for announcing mid-December that it had received too many housing applications and would have to prioritise first-year and regional applicants as a result.

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UTAS Vice-Chancellor Rufus Black on Friday said the institution would aim to add more than 300 new beds before semester one to ensure students in need had a room.

“All the students who are in our current accommodation will be offered places back in that accommodation next year,” Professor Black said.

“Our students have obviously been understandably distressed at the possibility they may not have housing, so the University of Tasmania’s teams have worked around the clock to find a solution and to get that done before Christmas.”

UTAS will also work to add 21 new beds to the existing MidCity Apartments and provide a further 16 beds at the Theatre Royal Hotel.

Professor Black would not reveal the whereabouts of UTAS’s new inner-city property, which he said was purchased at market price and had not been for sale until the university approached the vendors.

University of Tasmania Vice-Chancellor Professor Rufus Black announces plans to bring in demountable buildings. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

Professor Black said the demountables headed to the Sandy Bay campus had been used elsewhere before but would not be drawn on where nor the company that would provide them. He said the buildings would be refurbished and include bathrooms.

“It will have a look and feel very similar to what we currently have on site here,” Professor Black said.

“This is a solution that will tide us between where we are now and as you know we have a new building going into the city for 430 students that’ll open in 2021.”

The Tasmania University Union welcomed the announcement after gathering more than 5000 signatures within about 10 days condemning the university’s original decision to boot some people already in residential accommodation in favour of newcomers.

President Sharifah Syed Rohan said: “In the last fortnight I have received communication from a diverse range of students who have shared their distress and concerns pertaining to the university’s original communication and the prospect of needing to move out of their accommodation.

“We believe this is a terrific outcome for students who have housing concerns.”

The Tasmanian Council of Social Service also applauded UTAS’s swift action.

Acting chief executive Nicole Bride said: “Actions that lessen any of the many roadblocks to tertiary study in Tasmania for low-income students are essential to lifting educational attainment rates in the state.”