Student housing is perhaps not typically an issue for a Vice-Chancellor, but for Per Eriksson it has always been important. He thinks the opportunity to study at university should not be a question of luck, contacts or money.
“When my eldest daughter wanted to start studying in Lund and moved here from Karlskrona, I was able to buy her a flat. My parents would probably not have been able to afford to do that for me”, he says.
Furthermore, as Per Eriksson points out, many people choose Lund for its rich student life, and this makes it even more important to offer accommodation as well.
The path from the sofa to the joint investment in 1 000 new, relatively centrally located student flats has required a cool head and many discussions with the Government to bring about changes to directives both in the Higher Education Ordinance and for Akademiska hus. National and local support has also been very important.
“The art of making things happen is not making a couple of calls to the Ministry of Finance. There also have to be people pursuing the issue at an operational level and making it a reality”, says Per Eriksson, giving the example of Annette Stambolovski, strategic expert for the university management.
“She has been a vanguard; putting pressure on the Government Offices, running a tender for student housing and making the whole project possible”, he says.
If we turn back the clock to 2009 when Per Eriksson took over as vice-chancellor, the then president of LUS Petter Forkstam rented out his sofa to a homeless student and challenged Per Eriksson to do the same.
“Our idea at LUS was to move from being a critical student voice to a constructive one. The fact that the vice-chancellor took up the challenge and became a role model was extremely important. I think that resulted in accommodation for another 609 students that autumn”, says Petter Forkstam.
At the same time, Teknologkåren’s vice-president Kristoffer Danielsson requested permission to put up two large military tents for those still looking for permanent accommodation. Christian Nilsson was president of Teknologkåren at the time. He says:
“We actually tagged onto Per Eriksson at that point. We wanted to honour his initiative with the sofa and do something a bit crazy. The tents meant a lot of practical work, but it wasn’t that expensive because we could arrange showers, food and other things in Kårhuset. Akademiska hus granted us the use of the land.”
The tents were up for around three weeks in total and between 15 and 20 students lived in them.
These two events attracted a lot of media interest both locally and nationally. Tobias Krantz, Minister for Education at the time, was well aware of the problem by the time of the next meeting of vice-chancellors, at which Per Eriksson put forward his proposal. The other vice-chancellors immediately gave their support, especially the Vice-Chancellor of Stockholm University, who strongly recommended the proposal.
“I proposed that higher education institutions should not only be allowed to rent premises from Akademiska hus for education and research, but that we should also have permission to let accommodation to all students, not just international exchange students.”
Permission to do this was officially granted in 2010 and applies until 2016 at least.
“I hope and presume that this will be made permanent”, he says.
Per Eriksson looked forward with great anticipation to the bill this autumn and he was surprised when he saw the new wording of the directives for Akademiska hus. They included granting the use of land for student housing when a higher education institution requests it.
Over the years, Per Eriksson has also lobbied the municipality to change its policy on building accommodation for students. LKF, the municipal housing company in Lund, is now also involved in the issue of student housing. Having the municipality involved in the collaboration also helps speed up the time-consuming process of planning permission. If the university is the landlord and construction is close to its own buildings, the risk of objections being raised is also reduced.
The university has been able to expand the number of student rooms it lets by 500 in five years. At the start of 2009 there were 1 000 and at the start of 2014 there are 1 500. This includes the 200 flats in Chinese prefabricated buildings next to Ideon that were realised through a public procurement.
The university is now investing around SEK 15 million a year in its accommodation for 1 500 students.
“Of course this cost must be brought down. The rent for students in the new flats is somewhat high as well.”
Per Eriksson says this is because the new prefabricated buildings only have temporary planning permission and that Akademiska hus, which owns the land, has chosen neither to sell the land nor to rent it out with a ground lease, but rather to use a leasehold agreement. This raises the costs, which hits the students and the university.
Per Eriksson doesn’t see any other risks to the university’s involvement in the issue of housing. He doesn’t believe there is any likelihood of too much housing being built so that it is difficult to find tenants. There are already a range of organisations, including AF-bostäder, Lunds nation and Helsingkronas nation, that have started building. Various others are also interested, such as Blekingska nation, he says.
“However, there is a risk if we don’t invest in accommodation that students will go to other universities instead”, he says.
Text: Maria Lindh
Map: White Arkitekter
