Just to add to this: in my city it is only possible to get housing in your first year as a student if you are either super rich, super lucky or you join a fraternity. These frats are very dudebro and there are countless examples of daterapes and other disgusting behaviour of these people. In frat houses you have to ‘earn’ a door to your bedroom by having sex in. Which means you first have to have sex in your room without a door (so your roommates can see and hear clearly) before you can assemble a door to your room.

My city is not unique, in fact, the frats here are not as ‘prestigious’ as in other cities. The political class in my country mostly originates from 2 frats in other cities. France has a slightly different system that I can’t really speak for, Germany is weird because student associations are associated too much with nazism so many people don’t want to associate with them (but they still hold significant political power). AFAIK UK, Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and UK are as I described or similar, and I assume Switzerland, Austria, Sweden and Norway are similar as well.