Who is paying for this conversion? There's a reason developers are so keen on student accommodation, cheaper to built poor quality housing and they know they'll get a return in a shorter amount of time. They will then abandon it before a shit ton of work is needed.
When I lived in Portsmouth the local council wanted an underused student accommodation block converted into affordable flats and couldn't get any developer to touch it, the work to convert it was going to cost far too much compared to the return they could make.
Guess you could use it for asylum seekers but I thought we wanted to kick them all out?