One student says they are are surrendering their comfort just for a good night sleep.
Caitlin-Faye Maniti is outgoing president of the Irish Second-Level Students' Union.
She's struggling to find accommodation for college this September.
She told Newstalk Breakfast some are looking at commuting.
"I live in Donegal and I hope to go to Maynooth University this September.
"I've been listing up for student accommodation villages since February, I've applied to at least four student villages and I have not received an offer since.
"There's just a lack of supply [and] high demand of student accommodation.
"Also what I'm seeing is that there's just crazy prices for accommodation.
"There's €325 a week just for a shared room, a shared bathroom, a shared kitchen.
"We've got to the situation now where students are commuting... two hours, one hour a day to get to college.
"That for me is just not a viable solution".
She says others are considering B&Bs on a temporary basis.
"My parents have heard from other parents that their children are looking for B&Bs near their campus, where they just stay three or four nights a week, and then they come back home for the weekend.
"They just live out of a suitcase."
Caitlin says she's been appealing on social media for "a spare couch or a spare bed for just a night".
"That's how deep we are into the crisis, where students are surrendering their comfort just for a good night sleep".
'Need to treat it as an emergency'
Professor Linda Doyle, provost and president of Trinity College Dublin, believes this needs more urgency behind the accommodation crisis.
"There's an amount of honesty that's needed in dealing with it.
"We've 10,000 people and more homeless, so it's a huge issue for the country - and I think we first of all need to be honest about the scale of it.
"I do think we need to treat it as a proper emergency.
"If you look at what happened in COVID - when we mustered all the forces of the State, all of the expertise that was in the State, when we had kind of regular meetings about everything to do with COVID - I really think we're in that space now and it has to be treated like that.
"And then I think it needs to be much more radical for the long-term, I think there's a certain amount of courage needed to plan for the long-term... knowing that things may not come to pass while you're in power.
"The student problem is a problem because of the housing problem in general".
