Over half of students at UBC are facing financial difficulties due to housing, according to the 2025 Academic Experience Survey Report presented at the Alma Mater Society (AMS) Council meeting on July 23.
The survey, done yearly and based on undergraduate and graduate students’ responses, covers aspects of academic life such as campus safety, generative AI, exams and mental health, but housing emerged as a major issue. It found that 52 per cent of students were facing financial hardship related to housing.
Students reported that housing-related financial stress affected their academic performance. Many cited increased exam stress levels due to long commutes. Among 57 per cent of respondents who commute, 37 per cent took more than an hour to get to campus.
Andrew Parr, associate vice-president of student housing and community services attributed student difficulties with finding housing on campus to broader trends in the current marketplace including rental prices and low vacancy rates in the city.
In an interview with The Ubyssey, Parr emphasized UBC’s role in addressing the issue. “We’ve actually spent over $700 million building student housing in the last 14 years,” Parr said. Parr also said Student Housing has added almost 6,000 beds, but the waitlist has not shortened as demand remains large.
UBC is currently committing to a $560 million project for 1,500 more beds at the St. John’s College site. The project will consist of five new student residence buildings, for which the provincial government has provided a grant of 300 million dollars to UBC. The university will provide the remaining $259.9 million.
Parr also said that Student Housing and Community Services is attempting to keep rent below market rents to support students, although they have an obligation to cover costs such as mortgage.
“We are not profit-oriented, so we are able to pull that out of the cost and keep our costs below market rents, and that helps students,” Parr said.
Meanwhile, the AMS is calling for UBC’s housing to be matched with the growth rates to meet student needs.
“This is a long-term priority,” Zarifa Nawar, the AMS VP academic and university affairs, told The Ubyssey. This year, Nawar said that her goal is to have conversations with the university on tying student housing development to forecasted UBC growth rates, potentially exceeding the minimum of 3,300 beds by the mid 2030s targeted under the Housing Action Plan and Campus Vision 2050.
This commitment was made in the 2022/23 update to the Housing Action Plan, which was first adopted by the university in 2012 and is updated every five years. In this most recent update, it was also integrated with Campus Vision 2050, a long-term plan to “support the needs of the university, its students, residents, staff, and Musqueam.”
Nawar emphasized the compounding effect on the student side of high rental costs among rising rates of tuition and living expenses, placing a significant strain on their finances.
“When rent is due, [students] only have so much in their bank or in their resources that they're only able to pay for rent. At that point, the student is food insecure because they don't have any money left to go towards their groceries,” she said. In fact, 70 per cent of survey respondents said they worried about running out of food before buying groceries due to high housing costs.
Nawar said the AMS is also exploring solutions for housing bursaries and financial aid mechanisms, specifically by lowering the barrier to accessing them.
However, both Nawar and Parr pointed to the rising cost of construction as one of the biggest obstacles to building more housing.
“The cost of building housing, of infrastructure work, of construction work has skyrocketed,” said Nawar. Parr added that it is now almost twice as expensive to build a bedroom compared to five or ten years ago, indicating that construction costs have increased significantly over the last decade.
“In every aspect of life right now, the costs have gone up,” Parr said.
The post-pandemic landscape, inflation and a drop in international student enrolment have also strained UBC’s budget, making it more difficult to finance housing projects.
Nawar acknowledged that it is not only students but both the AMS and the university in a “tough financial situation.” Nevertheless, she reaffirmed their commitment to pushing for solutions.
“We're entering a period of time where these things are going to be more challenging than they have in the past,” she said.
“That doesn't mean that we're going to give up on any of this. That doesn't mean that we're not going to advocate.”
