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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Student housing prices were absurd in London like 20 years ago. Looking at the prices now - the increases for rooms near Western or Fanshawe don't look like they've grown as much as regular rentals here.