The weather is like a wet weekend in October, the Telegraph and the Times have A-listed their “blame the foreigners” line on their own kids scrambling getting into the Russell Group, and there’s already a canary in the coalmine chirping about the housing crisis I was talking about earlier this week.

And it’s an oldie but a baddie. Newport is back, baby.

When I’m trying to explain the nature of the student accommodation crisis facing a growing number of the UK’s university towns and cities, the Newport Student Village is one of my go-to anecdotes.

To meet the traditional new students accommodation guarantee amidst oversubscription, in 2019 the University of Bristol ended up offering students alternatives at its veterinary school in Langford, North Somerset and in Newport.

At the time, these options were very much framed by the university as a temporary measure:

One short-term option offered is staying on a temporary basis in University accommodation outside of Bristol… We are working very hard to find long-term solutions. The aim is to move those affected into University-allocated accommodation in Bristol as soon as suitable spaces become available.

2020 and 2021 were different stories for all sorts of reasons. But then in 2022, the block in Newport became a go-to solution for a similar problem at UWE, when it also turned to the property to house students – describing it as being located in a “vibrant student area”.

The Bristol Tab at the time wondered if “vibrant” was referring to the Newport Magistrates’ Court opposite, or the Castle Bingo located next door.

This time 130 students were given rooms – with UWE VC Steve West putting a brave face on things with pizza parties:

We’re working with the students [in Newport], and student community, providing pizza nights and other fun nights to bring a sense of community there.

It’s not immediately clear that that worked. By the end of the month the media was reporting in detail just how difficult it was for students living in one country and studying in another – with some quitting altogether:

Everyone who’s in Newport doesn’t want to be there… People are trying to move out but, apparently, you have to find someone else to cover that room before you can move somewhere else.

As NUS’ Chloe Field puts it:

Compromising on where you live while studying – whether that be on the basis of location, cost or quality– has a significant impact on students’ academic, financial and social situations.

By early October, the university was at least confirming that the Newport option was very much a temporary measure:

Residents at the Newport accommodation who wish to be released from their accommodation contracts will be released if they find accommodation in Bristol… Due to the increase in demand for on-campus living, UWE Bristol is building more accommodation on Frenchay Campus for an additional 2,250 students, with the first 900 rooms available from September 2023.

And Steve West was also stressing the idea that the solution was not ideal and temporary:

In an ideal world I would love to create enough accommodation on our campus but I can only build as fast as planners will allow.

What makes this year’s iteration of the story different – with the same block in Newport now back in play for the University of Bristol – is that this year, there’s an attempt to normalise what was once a sticking plaster. A spokesperson told the Tab this week:

For most students, accommodation will be one of the biggest expenses whilst at university. We want to provide our students with a wide range of options which are affordable and gives them what they are looking for, which is why we have added accommodation at Newport into our overall offer this year.

That does sound a lot like Bristol’s rich students get to live near Clifton, while its poor students have to live in… Wales. At least the “poor door” used to be on a different side of the same building, rather than in a different country.

Remember when we used to think of student accommodation as a great leveller? Me neither. When OfS’ equality of opportunity risk register says:

… students may not have equal opportunity to access limited resources related to higher education, such as suitable accommodation.

…I’m just not sure that John Blake had in mind “house them an hour away over the Severn Bridge” as a suitable risk mitigation step. The spokesperson continues:

We appreciate the vast majority of students will still want to live in Bristol but for those who are looking for a larger, modern room with its own bathroom [63 percent of our students say this is very important for them], Newport offers a much more affordable option.

On Campus Living Villages’ own website, a 42 week contract for a “cluster room” in the property is either Bronze at £5,838 a year (up 16 per cent compared to 2022), Silver at £6,258 a year (up 10 per cent on last year) or Gold at £6,678 a year (up 12.4 per cent on last year).

Booking through the university appears to cost £6,297 (Basic), £6,717 (Standard) or £7,138 (Standard Plus).

Maybe the extra is for the “free” bus pass for a “dedicated service” that links the property with the main university campus in Clifton. At least it’s still “vibrant”. Dominos must be rushed off their feet:

Students living in Newport will have the same access to our 24/7 support services in what we plan to be a vibrant community with shared social and study spaces and a wide range of events and activities.

You might ask how or why the Newport Student Village manages to have spare space every year. It is, after all, Newport’s only student accommodation block – built originally for students at the University of Wales, Newport’s Caerleon campus.

But despite promises that the merger and rebranding of the university into the University of South Wales in 2013 would not reduce campuses or student numbers, the 32-acre campus was closed in 2016 – when a largeish slice of arts and media courses moved to the Cardiff Atrium campus.

Ironically, the much nearer city of Cardiff appears to be in the midst of its own supply crisis – as international PGT numbers swell at both Uni of and Cardiff Met.

What’s caused all of this is anyone’s guess. To be fair, every time interest rates get nudged up to get inflation down, an offshoot issue is that buy-to-let landlords with a portfolio of properties find things tighter than they expected – and seem to be selling up in droves as a result.

To be less fair, I remain of the view that it’s reasonable to expect a university to be able to have a reasonable guess that students it recruits living away from home can access somewhere to live that’s of a reasonable distance from campus, at a reasonable price and of a reasonable quality. And if, in conjunction with its local universities and its local authority, it concludes it can’t, I can’t see how it’s moral to continue to recruit.

As well as everything else that this all tells us about the housing crisis, marketisation, the state of sector finances and the downsides of a laissez-faire “number controls are always bad” attitude, it also tells us how easy it is for crisis solutions to become normalised – when wicked problems become critical, only for the emergency solution to end up utterly routine.

It’s what I was getting at here – the sector seems to keep making what would previously have been unfathomable decisions on the basis that doing so is the least worst of the five awful options available that week. It’s when painting over mould becomes “a fun art project”, silverfish become “friends to help with the loneliness crisis” or living in Newport ends up being a fun coach trip every day of the week.

It’s only August 5th, and I’m now on my 14th SU this summer that’s been telling me about student homelessness in the year just gone – and my colleague Livia’s doing half.

I wouldn’t mind so much, but a stroll around Bristol (the city where I was a student in the 90s) a few weeks ago for this talk on belonging I was doing (which I spend half of talking about living over the road from campus) really confirmed something for me.

The most miserable thing about the hollowing out of towns and cities’ retail and office capacity and the replacement of it with student accommodation isn’t so much the astonishing profits being made from it, or the lack of a government “crackdown” on said “rip-off” – it’s the complete failure to invest in spaces in those places for those students in their glossy prisons to meet, share, learn and exist together.

At least the Newport students can go next door to the bingo. Just don’t shout “house”.

There’s more of this to come, sadly. Full marks if you can find a minister to even issue a quote, let alone develop a plan.