housing for students, but at what cost?

What do I serve you? I have syrup, coffee, vodka or beer. No doubt, we are in a student’s home, as confirmed by the construction site sign which decorates the main room, serving as a living room, kitchen and bedroom. Its 25 m studio² in the city center of Niort, for €325 rent excluding charges, Gabriel is happy with it. It must be said that the student almost found himself without a roof over his head when he began his second year of undergraduate studies at the Catholic University of the West (UCO), in September 2024.

“For 380 euros per month, you have a 15 m storage room² »

“My father was no longer “poor” enough for me to qualify for Crous housing like the previous year, but I only found out about it during the summer, he recalls. Which means that when I started looking for an apartment, at the beginning of August, there wasn’t much left that fit into my budget.”namely: €400 per month maximum, all charges included.

According to Adil, whose data on the subject remains to be consolidated, the average rent for a studio in Niort would be €352, compared to €446 for a T2. The average budget of Niort students fluctuates between €450 and €500 per month, compared to €350 a few years ago. And for good reason.

Increased from 2,500 to 3,500 between 2020 and 2024, the number of students in Niort could exceed 5,000 in 2028according to the municipality, which made it “a mandate priority”. With the risk, if the rental offer does not follow, of arousing the desire of slumlords, these owners renting unworthy or even unsanitary accommodation to the most precarious, in need of an alternative.

Gabriel and his father experienced this last August. “For €380 per month, you have a 15 m storage room² with a bathroom area that is half the size of a bed and a window that looks 30 centimeters above the sidewalk”testifies the 19-year-old young man, scrolling through the history of his searches on The good place. Discouraged by the prospect of paying agency fees, it was via an individual offer that he finally found the rare gem: “I was lucky. Most of the time, as soon as you are looking for more than 25 m² in the center, prices soar to around €600 ».

724 housing units in 2026

Aware of these difficulties, Niort Agglo has made welcoming its present and future students one of its priorities. Its Local Housing Plan (PLH) provides for a supply of 724 student housing units by 2026. The completion at the end of 2025 of the Venezia residence, under construction near the Nursing Training Institute, will add 221 apartments the current offer.

Allow €420 to €450 for the minimum rent for a studio, in line with the rates charged by the Cap West student residence, inaugurated on avenue de Nantes, in October 2023. Certainly, these prices are out of all proportion to the time when Niort was still passing under the radar of promoters, before 2020. However, they demonstrate a renewed attractiveness for the capital of Deux-Sèvres, partly linked to its growing student offering. A sort of price of glory, in short.