KPU students’ housing struggles addressed

KSA promotes off-campus housing, plans campaigns for on-campus housing

It’s no secret that the rental market in B.C. is tough to thrive in. The entire province is in the middle of an affordability high and a vacancy low, which means that for students living on a budget, finding room and board for a reasonable price can feel close to impossible. As a solution for students at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, the Kwantlen Student Association is working towards promoting housing off-campus, and constructing housing on campus.

Tanvir Singh, the KSA’s vice-president of student services, currently backs Kusa.och101.com, a housing locator designed for KPU students. The site is a part of the Rent Hello Rental Network, and it allows users to search for available properties based on location, housing type, and price range. The landlords whose listings are chosen are “specifically catered towards students,” meaning that they “know more about students’ needs,” according to Singh.

“We currently don’t provide on-campus housing for students, which has obviously been a concern since we have a lot of students that need affordable housing,” he says. “We thought that it would be a good service to provide students with a website that would allow them to find it.”

This year, he’s pushing to expand the KSA’s Rent Hello site by partnering with Places for Students, another online housing locator. The difference between the two platforms is that, unlike Rent Hello, Places for Students carefully screens the applicants that apply to post listings. In addition to screenings, they “do weekly updates on scam alerts [and] give students tips on how to not get caught up in fraud when it comes to housing.” That’s something that Singh values, since most students are inexperienced renters that are more likely to be taken advantage of by scammers.

At the same time, he wants to provide students with more housing options. By bringing Places for Students on board with the KSA’s efforts to promote off-campus student housing, they will a greater number of rentals to choose from. The original Rent Hello website will not be taken down, since each is “hosted by external companies,” that are unable to merge.

He sent his report to the executive committee this month, but there is not yet a set date for when the new website will be live. When it is, Singh predicts that, “the executive team will definitely work on some sort of outreach to students that require off-campus housing.”

Following Singh’s comment on the lack of on-campus housing, KSA president Alex McGowan is planning a fall campaign to construct some. The campaign will be “aimed around addressing affordability in BC,” as well as the province’s low vacancy rate.

“Universities aren’t allowed to build student housing [or] take on debt for that purpose. Because the B.C. government is not investing in any student housing, that means that students are really out of luck in terms of housing options,” says McGowan. “We’re going to be running this campaign, calling on the provincial government to invest money and facilitate the building of on-campus student housing…It’s estimated that in the Lower Mainland alone, 16,000 students could be housed on-campus, which would massively alleviate a lot of vacancy rate issues.”

The housing could be available as early as 2017 for an undetermined amount of rent. However, it could take several more years.

Students can expect to see a website for McGowan’s campaign sometime this autumn.