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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 39, No. 1, March 1, 1976

[Introduction]

At 25 February the Accomodation Service had 230 people registered seeking shelter. Even these figures understate the situation. In many cases one person registers on behalf of a group looking for a flat. The above figure doesn't include the large number of overseas students who arrive throughout March. Of course, Mr Muldoon could have them charged with being of no fixed abode and deport them, but they really don't look at all like Polynesians.......

Average rents are up but not the standard of accomodation generally being offered. Consequently, those at the beginning of the varsity year seeking accomodation don't have much choice. There has emerged a definite trend now that Students are looking for flats at the end of the varsity year and consequently have more to choose from.

The accomodation crisis emerged yet again into the fading sunlight of a pseudo-Wellington summer. It had been sheltering from the cold but yawned briefly and sprang forth when someone remembered he'd need a place to sleep in for 1976 apart from the academic glasshouse called Rankine Brown.

Attempted humour aside, it is true that places in flats are extremely scarce for students and the general public alike who want a roof over their stereo.

Hostels are all full except for a number of vacancies at Weir House. Earlier in February a large number of Weir vacancies was causing an embarrassment to the University because of a new student flat complex (Trinity-Newman - see later) proposed soon to come before the University's Accomodation Committee. (This "embarrassment" seemed to assume the hostel accomodation was acceptable to all students, whether or not they like hostels and/or had the financial resources to enable to live in one).).

The effects of the accomodation shortage on homeless students is a little depressing. It is an unsettling feeling which usually affects their studies. As a homeless student at present I can tell you it feels like being adrift in a dinghy on Wellington Harbour on Wahine Day!