How Universities are Dealing With the Student Housing Crisis

Clancy O’Keefe was thrilled when he found out he’d been accepted to the University of Guelph’s biochemistry program—his top pick—in early 2024. His brother had graduated from the school a year earlier, and it had a solid reputation among his friends and family. O’Keefe, who was 17 at the time and lived in Burlington, Ontario, quickly accepted the offer and waited for more details—including his residence placement. His mom had been told a spot was guaranteed.

A few weeks later, O’Keefe learned he was number 460 on a waiting list of over 1,300 students, none of whom had made the cut for one of Guelph’s approximately 5,000 residence spots. He was devastated. He considered his options: commute five days a week from Burlington, about a 45-minute drive, or find a place to live off-campus in Guelph. Neither option would result in the holistic, immersive university experience he’d been looking forward to. Reluctantly, O’Keefe withdrew from Guelph and accepted a spot in the biochemistry program at Western University in London, Ontario, where he was offered a dorm room. 

O’Keefe’s predicament is increasingly common. Across the country, there are only enough on-campus housing spaces for one in every 10 university students. Guelph is one of many schools struggling to meet the high demand for dorms, partly fuelled by the high cost of housing in nearby communities. Living on campus, which once felt like a given, is now a privilege, and students are paying the price. Now, universities and other organizations are racing to come up with solutions. 

Benefits of on-campus living

There are plenty of benefits to living in residence: built-in social connections, a short walk to class and the ease of getting involved in clubs, to name a few. In addition, students who live off-campus can’t easily access the wraparound supports students in residence benefit from—mental-health resources, wellness centres, campus security, financial, legal or academic guidance offices and more. Research shows that students with access to these services get higher first-year GPAs, are more likely to return for a second year and are more likely to graduate than those who spend their first year off-campus.

While the student housing crisis has become more acute in the past five years, it’s been decades in the making. The first wave of student housing broke ground at Canadian universities in the 1950s and, by the early 1960s, on-campus housing had become a standard offering. Shortly after, due to a lack of funding, the construction of dormitories slowed down and in some places, stopped. But the number of students attending post-secondary kept going up—enrolment increased by 298 per cent between 1961 and 1982, and has since doubled, to more than two million students enrolled in 2022-23. 

With so many students clamouring for spots, universities have been forced to start giving certain students priority for housing. In many cases, this means first-year students—but not always. Some schools reserve spaces for out-of-province students, others set aside space for international students. Good grades can play a role, too: many post-secondary institutions offer housing to students who meet a minimum GPA before opening up spaces for others. A lottery system is often used to fill remaining spots. And when the dorms are at full capacity? That’s when students have to look elsewhere.

When students can’t find rooms on campus, they migrate to the rental market near post-secondary institutions, which tends to be expensive. In Toronto, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is more than $3,300 a month. Even split two ways, that’s a lot more than the average cost of a dorm room in Canada, which sits at $3,000 to $7,500 per school year, depending on location, plus mandatory meal plan fees. Near Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, renting a room in a house can cost up to $1,300 a month. 

In downtown Toronto, where students from the University of Toronto, Toronto Metropolitan University and George Brown College are all in need of housing, there are several off-campus student housing options. The Neill-Wycik co-op, a non-profit building that’s a five-minute walk from TMU, currently has 780 occupants and offers single bedrooms well under market value. There are also for-profit developments like the Parkside Student Residence, which is five minutes’ walk from TMU and less than 20 minutes from U of T, and includes amenities like a gym, a rec centre, creative spaces and study areas. But this development also comes with a hefty price tag—a double occupancy room currently costs over $1,400 a month per person, and private rooms are being introduced at a higher rate. In Waterloo, Ontario, the Waterloo Co-operative Residence has room for 1,300 students across 13 buildings. 

Students can also look at rental websites like Student.com and University Living, which connect renters to furnished rentals near a variety of post-secondary institutions all over the world, including Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. These rentals often consist of a single room within a house or an apartment and, while they’re aimed at students, they’re on the private market and not affiliated with any post-secondary institutions. Finally, there’s the general rental market: high-rises, house shares, basement apartments and other units.

Alternatives and solutions

Between planning, funding, permits and construction, it can take years to build a new residence building. Nathi Zamisa is the co-executive director of Housing Our University Students Equitably (HOUSE), a non-profit organization with a mandate to research, advocate for and develop alternative student housing that is non-market, co-op, on-campus or within half an hour of campus. Started at York University in Toronto, HOUSE, which has a few Ontario-based chapters, was inspired by L’Unité de travail pour l’implantation de logement étudiant (UTILE) in Quebec. UTILE is currently developing non-profit, affordable off-campus student housing in Montreal that delivers wraparound supports, mimicking dorm life. This approach can ease demand in the housing market and reduce competition between students and non-student renters in the community, which in turn prevents rents from skyrocketing. “You can create density without altering a family neighbourhood,” Zamisa says. He adds that he believes students should be recognized as a priority group by the National Housing Strategy, which would reduce some of the challenges associated with developing purpose-built student housing (competing with for-profit developers for loans, for example). 

Another perk of purpose-built student housing is its payment structure and flexibility. While dorm stays are typically paid for up front and often require the purchase of an on-campus meal plan, renting a room or apartment from a non-profit student housing development allows students to better control their living expenses. A monthly rent payment is often less of a financial barrier than pre-paying for a full academic year in residence housing, and opting out of a meal plan gives students more control over their grocery costs. 

At the same time, new residence buildings are being built across the country. Plans are under way at the University of Guelph for an additional 4,000 residence beds spread across three new locations over the next 10 years (one specifically for around 1,500 first-year students and two for upper-year students and grad students with families). It’s the first new housing the school has built on the main campus in over 25 years. While it may seem reactive, it’s been in the works since 2022 and is part of a long-term plan that accounts for the needs of students over the next 40 years. Acknowledging the important support students are missing out on if they can’t live in residence, the school has also extended their first-year outreach program—essentially wellness check-ins—to off-campus students, allowing school staff to assess students’ well-being and connect them with the resources they need.

McMaster University in Hamilton is also developing additional on-campus housing, including a 1,366-bed residence that’s scheduled to open in the fall of 2026. In 2023, Conestoga College purchased two existing structures in the Kitchener area (an office building and a residence that was formerly used by the University of Waterloo) and renovated them to increase on-campus housing by 170 per cent in two years. Additional on-campus housing projects have been announced by the University of British Columbia, Dalhousie University in Halifax, the University of Windsor and many other schools across Canada.

In the meantime, students have options to weigh when they’re accepting offers. They should ask questions about residence availability before committing to a school and have a Plan B in case on-campus housing isn’t available to them. As for O’Keefe, he’s glad he was able to experience his first year of university living in residence. Having a roommate forced him to socialize, and he appreciated having access to campus resources. Now, preparing for his second year at Western, he’s found shared off-campus housing with a group of friends. The next crop of first years will move into the dorm he called home for eight months and, in a few short years, he’ll be starting his career.

This story appears in the 2025 edition of the Ultimate Guide to Canadian Universities. You can buy the issue for $19.99 here or on newsstands.