“Housing is shit…. People ask for gold in exchange for rooms that look like doghouses and scamming is at its peak in Dublin.” One incoming UCD student from Chandigarh, India, messages me. By all accounts, his frustration is not isolated.
Evidence suggests this difficulty extends beyond the pressures of the housing crisis. A 2020 study published in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies found that Irish applicants were more likely to be invited to view an apartment than Polish applicants, who were subsequently more likely to get a viewing than their Nigerian counterparts. Multiple reports support these findings, continuously suggesting that ethnic and nationality discrimination is common in Irish rental markets, with landlords openly favouring Irish and EU nationals over non-EU nationals.
According to a 2018 study by the Economic and Social Research Institute, black renters report being refused or overcharged at several times the rate of white renters and are five times more likely to report discrimination. Asian individuals are 3.7 times more likely to report housing discrimination than white respondents.
For Anushka Baisoya, UCD SU’s Postgraduate Officer, the difficulties faced by international students are evident in the experiences of the students she represents. She says international students can face additional questions and paperwork when searching for accommodation, with landlords asking for Residence Permits, Garda Vetting or a letter of permit from UCD itself. According to a report by UCD’s Geary Institute for Public Policy, international students also often lack guarantors or Irish credit history, effectively restricting their options and constituting yet another structural barrier.
For some students, the pressure extends beyond the practical difficulties of securing a room. Baisoya describes the pressure on some international students, particularly Indian students, to be the ‘perfect immigrant’.
“Sometimes students can feel an undue extra pressure to behave perfectly as ideal, law-abiding citizens in a country that we did not grow up in,” she says. “So we feel the added pressure of behaving in public, ensuring we don’t mess things up, or following the law and customs. Landlords are aware of how desperate students are, and because of that, they charge a lot, like €800 for a double-sharing place with not very good facilities or area.”
The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission found that non-EU migrants tended to end up in overcrowded conditions and faced harsher housing deprivation than ordinary residents. They are also expected to accept the violation of housing standards simply because they are in a vulnerable position.
Discrimination also occurs through indirect channels. According to ICOS 2025, scammers advertise fake apartments online at low prices and often demand deposits before vanishing. The report found that more than one in ten international students had already been victims of such scams.
The experiences reported by international students also illustrate how they directly encounter racism throughout their accommodation search. A Nigerian respondent from the ICOS 2023 report notes: “I applied for loads of houses and would be told ‘oh we don’t want foreigners’ or ‘we don’t accept Indians’ (I’m not even Indian) or ‘there are enough Nigerians already’”. Even a passive scroll through the ‘Rent in Dublin’ Facebook group offers examples of the attitudes international renters encounter. Under a post from an Irish woman searching for accommodation, one man commented: “best of luck, Irish first…”.
For the student from Chandigarh, the search for accommodation has now stretched to four months and more than 20 viewings. As he continues to look for somewhere to live, the question becomes not whether rooms are available, but whether he will be given the same opportunity to secure them.
Anastasia Glushchenko – Contributor