By Thomas Doucet

Students search for housing

Post-secondary students feeling the housing crunch

Aug 22, 2022 | 12:06 PM

PRINCE GEORGE—With just weeks left before classes are back in session, out-of-town post-secondary students are moving to Prince George. Some of whom are making use of the school’s on-campus accommodations.

“So our experience has been that our student housing on campus, which we’ve had in Prince George here for quite some years, usually provides short-term or transitional accommodation. So we may have a lot of interest in September and maybe again in January, but typically students often find their own accommodation in privately owned apartments and homes over the course of the term,” said CNC President Dennis Johnson.

Not everyone can or wants to live in student accommodations so that leaves trying to find a private rental and that comes with its own set of challenges.

“The only options that I originally found back in 2020, 2021 were basement suites with people I wasn’t familiar with, and I was kind of concerned about the safety and COVID issues,” says current UNBC Student, Myers Illes. “So a lot of the places I was looking for actually wouldn’t accept me because I didn’t have a stable full-time income. Because I’m a student, I can’t work more than about part-time, or I lose access to a lot of student grants.”

Experts say the housing shortage is driving costs up for students as well.

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“Right now there is quite a shortage of supply when it comes to rental properties,” says Christine Buemann, Owner of Collective Mortgage Group. “So if they (students) are moving here, then it’s just an additional cost. They may end up in a shared space. They end up in a basement suite with three or four other people who are in a similar situation.”

Student housing at CNC will run you $2,000 a semester. UNBC accommodations will cost $2,602 a semester for a room in a four-bedroom suite and student-focused private housing such as VEDA living will cost just over $1,000 a month with utilities included.

“So if a new student was in my position right now, I think it’d be really difficult to find a safe and affordable place to live. But I think someone in my position now looking for someplace to live is going to be extremely hard pressed to find that,” says Illes.