Accommodation shortages at the WA School of Mines have left university students sleeping in tents and couch surfing, the Curtin Student Guild says.
President Dylan Storer said the Kalgoorlie campus had more students than beds, and some were experiencing homelessness because of it.
It is compulsory for many Curtin University engineering, mining or metallurgy students to spend one or two years studying at the WA School of Mines in Kalgoorlie-Boulder.
“We’ve got horrible situations of students facing homelessness or experiencing homelessness, simply because they’re out there trying to get this world-class education at a world-class institution,” Mr Storer said.
“We’ve found student accommodation in Kalgoorlie is actually of a higher quality, is more affordable, is run and governed better than student accommodation here in Perth in many instances, but the problem is there isn’t enough of it.
“We need the university to step up and outline a plan to build more housing.”
The student guild has researched student housing across Curtin University campuses, and Mr Storer said many Kalgoorlie-Boulder students reported sleeping rough.
“We’ve heard stories of students who are essentially staying in really expensive hotels until their money runs out and then couch surfing or sleeping in tents in people’s backyards,” he said.
Mr Storer is hoping that drawing attention to the problem will bring about a solution.
“We had a situation last year where a lot of students wanted to bring some attention to this, and they were planning to start some sort of a camp near the train station,” he said.
“But once Curtin found out, they were able to find housing for those students.”
Research by the guild also found that only 28 per cent of international students were housed in student accommodation, despite making up about half of the student cohort.
Mr Storer said undergraduate students were prioritised in housing allocations, and international students were more often postgraduate students.
“We can look at shuffling the allocation of beds, but the actual solution here isn’t to favour one group of students over another,” he said.
“It’s to build enough housing so that every student has access to the housing that they need in order to study.”
“Ideally, Curtin should have been working to build more housing at Agricola (the main student accommodation in Kalgoorlie-Boulder) a long time ago, but the second-best time to do that is now.
“If we want to secure the future of WASM and the Kalgoorlie campus as a whole, we’ve got to have places for students to stay.”
A spokesperson from Curtin University told the Kalgoorlie Miner the university was actively working to address student accommodation needs in Kalgoorlie-Boulder.
“We have a robust process for managing the waitlist at Agricola, including supporting students with finding flatmates, completing rental applications and finding other appropriate rental accommodation,” they said.
“Reports of students experiencing significant accommodation hardship are deeply concerning. We encourage the Guild to share these cases with us or ask any such students to contact us directly so we can connect them with available support and assistance, including financial help.
“We remain committed to ensuring students have access to safe, affordable and appropriate accommodation while they study in Kalgoorlie and will share our plans for student housing in the region in due course.”
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