South Africa’s Student Housing Crisis Is Structural
Across universities and TVET colleges across the country, access to student accommodation has become one of the most significant barriers to higher education.
At 5 AM, the line outside most residence offices is already snaking around the building. Students sit on suitcases, wrapped in hoodies against the wind, refreshing emails that say nothing new. Some have been admitted for weeks. Some hold printed proof of funding from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). None of it guarantees a bed.
This is how the academic year now begins across South Africa: not in lecture halls, but in queues.
The struggle for access to higher education has always been political. The student uprisings of 2015 and 2016 forced the state to confront the cost of exclusion. The reverberations of Fees Must Fall and Rhodes Must Fall reshaped NSFAS’s funding model, expanding financial support for poor and working-class students.
Today, NSFAS provides full bursaries, living allowances and travel support to qualifying undergraduate students. Despite well-documented administrative failures and systemic barriers, it remains a critical intervention. For many families, it is the difference between exclusion and opportunity.
But a new fault line has emerged. Admission and funding mean little without accommodation. Across universities and TVET colleges, the right to study is increasingly determined by whether a student can secure safe, affordable housing. Access to higher education has shifted from the question of fees to the question of shelter.
For many students, the anxiety of registration has little to do with academic acceptance and everything to do with whether they will have a roof over their heads. For student leaders, accommodation disputes dominate engagements with management year after year. Students travel from rural villages, small towns, major cities and neighbouring countries to pursue higher education. That right is inseparable from the right to safe, dignified and conducive housing.
Unsurprisingly, most students prefer residences managed by universities and TVET colleges. These are generally cheaper, better regulated and designed around student life. On-campus residences offer immediate access to libraries, lecture halls and support services. Many institutions also operate off-campus student accommodation facilities, though these often compromise on safety and accessibility.
There have been repeated incidents across multiple tertiary institutions where students have fallen victim to shootings, robberies and muggings just outside their residences. Accommodation that is meant to provide safety and stability for learning instead becomes a site of anxiety and risk.
But safety is only part of the crisis. The deeper problem is capacity.
Across the sector, institutional residences house only a fraction of enrolled students, often well below 25 per cent. The majority are pushed into privately owned accommodation, where standards vary widely.
Historically, universities and colleges have vetted and accredited private residences, setting minimum safety and suitability standards. In practice, this oversight is uneven. Some properties are accredited once and never reassessed, even as conditions deteriorate.
For students funded by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), accommodation payments are channelled through institutions to private landlords. In 2022 and 2023, NSFAS attempted to centralise the accreditation process, removing this responsibility from institutions. The pilot was widely criticised and poorly implemented, forcing a partial retreat. In 2026, NSFAS relaunched the initiative with a narrower mandate, paying private accommodation providers directly.
For students, these administrative shifts are secondary. What matters is whether accommodation is available, affordable and safe. Increasingly, it is not. For parents and guardians, acceptance into a distant institution is meaningless without guaranteed housing. Engagements with private accommodation representatives reveal how easily desperation is exploited, particularly during registration and among first-year students.
Unscrupulous landlords demand excessive deposits and administrative fees, despite NSFAS and institutional rules prohibiting such practices. In some cases, students pay and receive nothing in return. The financial and emotional toll is severe, often before lectures even begin.
This crisis is not seasonal. It is structural. It returns every January with predictable regularity because it has never been resolved. If a student has met the academic requirements and secured financial support, housing should not be the final gatekeeper. Yet year after year, institutions operate below capacity, government departments respond reactively, and the private market capitalises on vulnerability.
South Africa cannot claim to defend access to higher education while leaving students to navigate unsafe neighbourhoods, exploitative landlords and endless waiting lists. Admission without accommodation is not access. It is a promise made on paper and broken in practice.
Until student housing is treated as core infrastructure rather than an auxiliary service, the queues at dawn will remain the real beginning of the academic year.