Towards an Online Portal for Locating Students’ Private Rental Accommodation in Tanzania

Abstract

Student accommodation has been a challenge in higher education institutions. This paper presents the assessment of the current situation regarding the provision of student accommodation in higher education institutions in Tanzania and access to private rental accommodation as an alternative source of accommodation among students. Furthermore, the study presents an online portal, as a designed solution to address the challenges that students face during searching and locating private rental accommodation. The study was conducted in Arusha and Dar es Salaam regions of Tanzania and involved a total of 372 respondents, including 351 undergraduate students, four students' welfare officers in the selected institutions, ten brokers, and seven landlords. The questionnaires were randomly distributed to undergraduate students; semi-structured interviews were conducted to landlords, brokers, and students' welfare officers. Data obtained was analyzed using R software. The results show that: 69.5% of students were living in private rental accommodation, this indicates that majority of students depend on private rental accommodation; 47.5% described the searching process as being very difficult and 86.9% of them agreed on having information and communication technology tool as a solution for searching and locating private rental accommodation easily and at an affordable cost. The proposed solution, through the online portal, is an efficient method to seek accommodation in the rental market that will help students to save the time and money spent on searching and have easy access to information on available rentals. In addition, landlords and brokers will be able to advertise their properties to students.