On the 28th and 29th of November, a wide variety of stakeholders convened at the University Politecnico di Milano for the “Welcome HOME – Promoting Quality Student Accommodations for Erasmus+ Mobilities”, the final conference of the EU-funded project HOME – Home Of Mobile Europeans.
Over the course of two days, representatives from universities, student organisations, housing providers, and national agencies reflected, together with the HOME project partners, on the current housing crisis.
Throughout the years, the housing situation of students and students on mobility has been exacerbated by a combination of factors, including rising rent prices, rising construction prices, energy crisis and increasing inflation. As a result, many students going on mobility have little to no choice but to live in substandard or poor-quality accommodations or what is worse have to give up on the chance to go on mobility due to financial and economic reasons.
Against this rather grim backdrop, the HOME project partners showed some solutions developed in the framework of the project aimed at tackling the abovementioned issue. In particular:
- The creation and adoption of 9 Quality Labels which will help identify easily key features of student accommodations such as accessibility, closeness to services, good quality-price ratio and more, thus making housing more transparent and accessible to students.
- The development of Digital Data Standards intends to give a more standardised housing information to students on mobility.
- Proposals for increased synergy between stakeholders to reach common goals and meet students’ needs in terms of housing offer.
The mission of the project is to give students the opportunity to browse through offers from different housing provider in the Erasmus+ App. The transparency-based search function that will soon be integrated in the Erasmus+ App is expected to increase students´ accessibility to quality mobility experiences.
About the project
The HOME project is coordinated by HousingAnywhere in partnership with International Union of Property Owners, Erasmus Student Network, University Politecnico di Milano, Confia International, and the European University Foundation.