'Studentification' leaves locals out in the cold | Matt Mohan-Hickson

There is a term known as ‘studentification’.
Catherine House hall of residence, Uniiversity of Portsmouth, Stanhope Road. Picture: by Chris MoorhouseCatherine House hall of residence, Uniiversity of Portsmouth, Stanhope Road. Picture: by Chris Moorhouse
Catherine House hall of residence, Uniiversity of Portsmouth, Stanhope Road. Picture: by Chris Moorhouse

It is a bit like gentrification, except occurs when an area becomes dominated by student-only housing.

Which makes it even more damaging for the local population as students are transient and on the whole don’t live in the city full-time.

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Portsmouth is starting to feel like a city dominated by studentification. You can see it in the skyline, with all the new tower blocks built for students.

But it is most evident when you are trying to look for places to rent.

I have been searching for a studio or one bed flats to move into – I am so tired of flat-sharing, especially as I love to cook and having to worry about other people trashing the kitchen before I can start to make my meals.

However I have been left increasingly frustrated in my search attempts.

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Each time I spot a particularly nice looking place, which looks well kept and is furnished, it turns out to be in a student-only building. One with tons of amenities and luxuries, but one kept exclusively for students.

It is extremely annoying. Especially when the options for professionals are far more limited – or require furnishing, turning moving into an even more expensive endeavour.

Why should all the nicest studio apartments be simply kept for students alone? If you are going to build huge tower blocks, with services like concierge and gyms and coffee shops, why should locals not be able to take advantage of that?

After all, we are the ones who will see the monstrous buildings 24/7 365 as we look out across the city.

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It makes an already frustrating process of having to move, even more of a pain.

This is not me trying to say that students should be forced to live in hovels or anything, but surely there should almost be a one for them, one for us, rule with these developments.

If you are building a swanky apartment building that you are only going to rent out to students, then surely you should build similar high quality options for local renters?

I just want to live in a nice, clean and well-kept studio apartment, without having to worry about messy housemates.

Is this too much to ask? Clearly, yes.

When do I have to accept my old laptop is past it?

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At what point do you finally give in and accept that you will have to buy a new laptop?

I probably should have done it eight years ago when I dropped mine and had to tape it back together - said fix job is still in place to this day.

But at least then I had the excuse of being a student and unable to fork out hundreds of pounds for a new one.

Fast forward to 2021 and I am still trying to find ways of squirming out of buying a new laptop for myself.

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Sure, it takes about a week to boot up and then once it’s finally awakened from its slumber it crashes at an almost hourly rate.

But would I use a new laptop anyways? After all, I don’t use the current one – although that is because it is so broken and crashes so regularly that it is practically useless.

Turns out my thought pattern is quite circular on this topic.

I was hoping to make it through 2021 and have my old not-so reliable laptop crawl over into 2022, but just typing this out makes me realise that probably isn’t going to happen.

Twitter’s out – ‘interesting facts’ are in

I think I have finally kicked my Twitter habit.

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It is something that I have wanted to do for a long time, it is such a time sink and staring at a tiny screen for excessive hours is probably wreaking havoc on my eyes.

But there was always that next post luring me back in hook, line and sinker.

However after the Euro 2020 final, I decided to take the plunge and stop using Twitter.

Part of it was driven by moral uneasiness, with England players yet again receiving racist abuse on the platform – how could I criticise that and yet keep using the platform?

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But mostly I just was sick of wasting time staring at my phone when I could be reading or listening to history podcasts.

And now I can regurgitate random facts about the French Revolution – including how the term vandalism entered the lexicon, or what 9 Thermidor means (it involves a completely new calendar).

Whether that is a good thing or not probably depends if you’ve been on the end of one of my ‘interesting facts’.

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