Opinion: Providing more student housing on university and college campuses would free up affordable rental housing in the community and such housing can be developed more quickly than other forms of housing
Building student housing is one such solution. British Columbia faces an unprecedented shortage of affordable rental housing. We also face a talent shortage that threatens our economy’s health and our prospects for future prosperity.Sign up to know what's really happening by reading daily editorials and commentary by British Columbia's opinion leadersBy clicking on the sign up button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.
Given these constraints, this strategy would benefit from the addition of an ambitious plan to construct more student housing. Such a commitment would build on the current government’s highly successful student housing initiative. Launched in 2018 with the goal of adding 8,000 new on-campus student beds within ten years, the initiative has in just four years resulted in 7,500 of these beds being created or underway.
As a result, such housing can be developed more quickly than other forms of housing. Perhaps the greatest benefit of all, however, is that by providing students with thousands of beds of suitable on-campus housing, such a plan would also free up thousands of units of affordable rental housing for others in the community.
The answer lies in provincial accounting practices. Even though such housing requires no commitment of government operating funds, accounting policies imposed by the auditor general call upon the province to show the borrowing costs experienced by universities and other post-secondary institutions to build such projects as part of its overall debt. This is so even where, as is usually the case, such costs are fully recoverable from student rents.
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