An accommodation crisis and poverty among University of Nairobi students have pushed them into a new business of renting out rooms to survive.
There has been an acute shortage of rooms at the expansive university, which has more than 15 hostels, leading students to devise new ways of surviving the crises, including “buying rooms” from fellow students.
Buying and selling
A Nation investigation found the university’s main campus has shortage of hostel rooms, leading to some students taking advantage of the situation by acting as middlemen in the buying and selling of rooms.
This has led to the rise of unscrupulous dealers who con students by posing as agents who rent out rooms within the university, but vanish immediately they are paid.
Some con men have pinned posters at the university calling for students with rooms to contact them. A single room provided by the university to a government sponsored student goes for between Sh5,000 and Sh6,000 per academic year. But the same room fetches Sh40,000 to Sh50,000 per year if it is rented out to students who missed accommodation.
Chief halls officer Benjamin Katuva declined to comment on the issue, saying, the public relations office was mandated to speak on behalf of the institution.
Public relations officer Charles Sikulu said the university was not aware of any trade in rooms although he admitted there was an accommodation crisis.
“All we know is that it is the Students Welfare Association that allocates rooms to students; anything else is illegal,” Mr Sikulu said.
Students Organisation of Nairobi University (Sonu) secretary-general Edith Mwirigi says the university should put in place measures to address the crisis of students’ accommodation.
Lovers move in
“If the administration does not have funds, they can allow Sonu to look for investors to build enough hostels,” she said.
Parallel students in the same university are not given accommodation and are, therefore, the main customers of the agents.
An emerging trend in the universities is where students decide live together and rent out one of the rooms. Those who fall pregnant also rent out their hostel rooms as they cannot reside in the hostels once they have given birth.
Lovers in universities also move in together, leaving one room empty to rent. Renting out a room is considered a serious offence by the university and a student caught in the act risks suspension.-Daily Nation
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