In August 2022, Thompson Rivers University (TRU) had such a long waitlist for student housing that it procured a 113-bed workcamp from northern B.C. as a temporary measure.
Less than three years later, the Kamloops-based institution is now contemplating closing a 305-bed dormitory, partly due to Ottawa’s caps on foreign student permits.
“The international demand has tapered right off because of the federal changes,” said Matt Milovick, TRU’s vice-president of administration and finance.
“The dramatic decline for international applicants is really going to start to be felt this fall and next fall, so those numbers are going to fall right off.”
In 2024, the federal Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship (IRCC) capped the number of study permit applications that could be accepted for processing, a decision that is having repercussions for student housing in B.C.
“This measure has reduced the number of international students coming to Canada by about 40 per cent and also eased pressures in rental markets with high student populations,” said a January 24, 2025 notice from the ministry.
For 2025, the ministry planned to issue a total of 437,000 study permits, a further 10-per-cent decrease from 2024, said the notice. More recently, the May 27 throne speech delivered by King Charles III announced another new ceiling.
“The government will cap the total number of temporary foreign workers and international students to less than five per cent of Canada’s population by 2027,” according to the official transcript.
The changes highlight part of the complexity in delivering student housing in B.C. On one hand, the potential closure of TRU’s dormitory shows how things can flip on a policy dime. On the other, investors see strong fundamentals and are stepping up.
“I was at a student housing summit in Toronto last week, and private-sector investors and developers are very bullish about student housing these days. There is quite a bit of capital available in the marketplace,” said Andrew Parr, associate vice-president, student housing and community services, University of British Columbia.
For example, North Vancouver-based Pure Multi-Family Group recently announced it would partner with Vancouver-based Global Education Communities Corp. to develop a $330 million “education mega centre” in downtown Surrey, including a 49-storey mixed-use tower with housing and education components in close proximity to SkyTrain and a Simon Fraser University campus.
Institutions adapting to new landscape
When it comes to student housing, the overall dynamic is one of undersupply, said Andrew Ramlo, vice-president, advisory, with Rennie & Associates Realty Ltd.
“Much like the housing market in general, a lot of the post-secondary institutions have kind of underbuilt for student housing, whether that be on campus or in close proximity to campuses,” he said.
“It’s not just about the international flow of students driving the demand, I think there’s a pretty significant unmet demand from the domestic side as well.”
North Vancouver’s Capilano University is in the process of completing a residence building on campus with 362 beds, with accommodation expected to begin by January. The goal is to transition students there from an off-site residence complex currently leased from Tsleil-Waututh Nation.
“We were very fortunate to have a combination of loan and grant from the province, and then our own internal funding,” said Daniel Levangie, CapU’s associate vice-president, student success.
“It looks like we’ll be able to manage on a functional basis where the cost for students balances out effectively with the cost for us to operate it, so it doesn’t put us in a loss position.”
Levangie said CapU typically receives more than twice as many applications as beds, suggesting that demand remains solid. Two years ago, there were 287 international students looking for housing, last year there were 214, and this year there are 125 so far.
“It’s not the final number so it doesn’t tell the complete story yet,” he said.
In the meantime, some colleges are getting creative.
In March, Kwantlen Polytechnic University partnered with Toronto-based SpacesShared (formally RoomEaze Accomodation Inc.), a home-sharing platform that matches students with older adults who have spare rooms to rent.
The partnership, which covers all five KPU campuses in the Lower Mainland, has seen close to 130 registered students so far, said Zena Mitchell, vice-president, students.
“We’re looking to build our inventory of hosts and firm up more matches for our students,” she said.
KPU does not have any on-campus student residences, though one is envisioned.
“We’re continuing conversations with the province while they assess our business case for potential student dormitories and residents at our Surrey campus,” Mitchell said.
Economics of student housing in focus
While some B.C. universities may benefit from vast endowments and land holdings, UBC’s Parr said it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
While UBC does not need to pay for land already in its control, the savings are offset by high borrowing costs, said Parr. “In fact, the cost of borrowing over a 25-year amortization period is greater than the value of the land we are using for student housing,” he said.
Another challenge is “public sector [post-secondary institutions] are often not allowed to access external borrowing as these budgets roll up to the province’s budget and could impact the province’s credit rating,” he said.
Besides those that receive provincial dollars, all other projects at UBC have been financed internally by borrowing from a portion of the UBC endowment and paying investment rates on the mortgage interest to support endowment growth.
For smaller universities, provincial funding can make or break a project, said TRU’s Milovick.
“By and large, we need government investment for us to actually make the rates affordable for students when we build residences,” Milovick said, citing the recent denial of funding for a 75-bed project at TRU due to the province’s forecast of insufficient need.
Still, he said there’s no single model for financing and building a dorm. “There are different machinations. There isn’t one formula that gets a residence built,” he said.
Growing gap in living conditions
In an October 2024 report, Statistics Canada researchers found that on average, international students paid 10 per cent more in monthly rental costs per rental unit, compared with Canadian-born individuals living in the same urban area.
“International students were less likely than Canadian-born individuals to reside in subsidized housing and more likely to live in condominiums and newer buildings,” the report found.
At the same time, many others live in “unsuitable” housing defined as having an insufficient number of bedrooms, according to a May 2024 StatCan report. In Vancouver, for example, 29.2 per cent of study permit holders lived in unsuitable housing, compared to 15.4 per cent of Canadian-born students aged 18 to 24.
Students from India were particularly prone to crowded living conditions, with 53.3 per cent of study permit holders from India living in unsuitable housing, said StatCan.
As Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government works to reduce non-permanent residents, which includes international students, from about 7.4 per cent of Canada’s population down to about five, student housing could see further disruption, said Rennie’s Ramlo.
With international students accounting for 40 to 50 per cent of that cohort, consequences are sure to follow from the reduced flow, he said.
“As we move those numbers down, there’s certainly going to be an implication for student housing,” he said.
