Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
They’re a big part of the rental crisis in cities with rapidly growing student populations. 620k a year (up from 120k in 2000) concentrated in universities that haven’t built nearly enough residential housing is absolutely a problem in small cities like London, Kingston, and Halifax. The CBC has even done stories about it. Weirdly.
Is it really off-base to talk about the how the number of people who need housing affects the cost of housing? Landlords are going to charge what they can. And they can charge more when the number of people who need housing increases faster than new housing is built.
If we want to safeguard students from ‘profiteering’ landlords (are there non-profiteering landlords?), then universities need to build far more student residences. But they haven’t - they’ve dramatically increased their intake of international students in the last 20 years because they can charge three times the tuition as they charge domestic students, without a corresponding increase in student housing capacity. They get the benefit of international students (more $$$), while offloading the infrastructure costs on municipalities and leaving students vulnerable to housing markets that can’t cope with the influx.
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That makes more sense.
Do we know that the universities aren't even attempting to reinvest those funds into housing?
Anecdotally, I know that UVic has essentially maxed out the amount of student housing they can build on their property. Can't imagine that buying additional land in the surrounding neighbourhoods would be very easy due to both the costs involved and the insane NIMBYs that live by the university.