N.S. universities scramble to build more on-campus housing as students face homelessness

Nova Scotia universities and colleges are scrambling to build more on-campus housing as their students struggle to find anywhere to live.

Some schools are planning to create hundreds of new rooms for students, but it will take years, and tens of millions of dollars to make those goals reality. 

In the meantime, students like Terra Carter are sometimes finding themselves homeless, resorting to couch surfing.

"Back in April, my housing fell through and I had to couch surf between three friends' houses for about a month," said Carter, who is the external vice-president of the students' union at the University of King's College.

Carter is once again housed, and is now the one offering a couch to others, or, when their couch is full, loaning a tent and camping mattress to pitch in the backyard.

Carter said some students who are currently homeless are considering taking a year off school, if housing continues to be elusive.

"I'm hopeful that they won't [take a year off] — we are finding solutions, we are finding places where they might be able to live soon, but right now, this first week of school and being homeless and hopping around couch to couch every other night, is feeling more and more dire everyday."

New rooms coming

King's announced this week it is starting to design a new building for the southeast corner of its campus that would include up to 260 new rooms for students. The envisioned multi-storey building would also house a new gym, and the schools of journalism and creative writing.

"We're kind of bursting at the seams at King's," said university president William Lahey, adding that some university staff have had to move to office space downtown this year to accommodate the school's growth. 

Lahey said demand for on-campus housing has surged in the past few years.

"I'm hoping that reflects a lot of the work we've done at King's to make living in residence more attractive, but it's undoubtedly also a reflection of the increasing challenges that King's students are facing in finding affordable and appropriate housing [off campus.]"

All Halifax schools want to expand housing

King's is not alone. According to the Association of Atlantic Universities (AAU), every university in Halifax is looking to expand student housing. 

Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) is the furthest along, with construction already underway for about 350 new units across three of its campuses, but other schools are still in the early stages of planning and, perhaps most crucially, fundraising.

Lahey said the size of the new build at King's will be determined, in part, by how much money can be raised. The project could cost anywhere from $40 million to $80 million. Help from the provincial and federal governments will be needed, he said.

The province has given $112 million to the NSCC housing projects. Advanced Education Minister Brian Wong said further plans for addressing the student housing shortage are coming, though he did not provide any details.

Wong's department was supposed to release a student housing strategy this past spring, but he told reporters this week it remains incomplete.

"The plan is still being worked on, we want to put our final touches on it," said Wong. "But … whatever comes out in the plan, isn't going to make things happen any faster. It takes time to build infrastructure, it takes time to plan infrastructure."

That fact is on the mind of Carter, too, who said they're glad King's is planning for more rooms, but noted the project won't be ready in time to help students in need right now.

Meanwhile, some schools are making desperate pleas to the public to open rooms in their homes, while students pore over rental ads alongside their textbooks.