Building of new student flats grinds to a halt Essay

The article Building of new student flats grinds to a halt, published on 9 May, 2011 on http://www.thelocal.se/33658/20110509/, reports that the quantity of newly-built apartments for students in 2010 is only one tenth comparing to the number of units in 2009. It is believed that Sweden has a crisis because of the lack of housing for students. According to the Uppsala University’s student newspaper, the housing crisis in the region was considered to be “the worse than ever”.
That’s why, national and local initiatives are being demanded to solve the problem of the housing lack for the university students.
According to TT news agency, the chair of Sweden’s National Union of Students, Beatrice Hцgе, thinks that to stimulate the building of student houses the politicians should enact subsidies and tax breaks as well as reduced value added tax on the construction.
In addition, the Statistics Sweden (SCB) claims that in 2010 just 125 apartments for students were completed, dropping from the 1,172 housing unites in 2009.
This article also reports that last year about 83,000 new students were accepted to study at Swedish universities. This means that for each one thousand students accepted there were not even two new apartments built.
Meanwhile, the chair of the Stockholm Federation of Student Unions, Oscar Lavelid, claimed that 18 months was considered to be the wait time for a one-room student apartment through the main student housing foundation in the Stockholm.
To sum up, Sweden has a number of problems because there are not enough places for students to live in as the building of the student housing has dramatically dropped this year. So the student organizations are asking the authorities to stimulate the building of apartments for students.