Exemption from the Residential Tenancy Act is to blame
Photo by Sydney Lobe.
“Students rely on the university for housing, especially in their first year,” says University of Alberta professor and housing issues specialist Damian Collins. “I’d like to think that universities have a responsibility to … not [make] housing affordability worse for those students.”
But some say UVic’s 10 per cent residence fee increase, which ranks among the highest percentage increases for on-campus living in B.C., fails this critical responsibility.
A university spokesperson explained in an email to the Martlet that their tuition and ancillary fees sit intermediately compared to other Canadian universities and attribute the rising fees to “[increasing] prices for food costs, supplies, labour and energy.”
This answer, however, will do little to ease the minds of new students over their newfound financial burden.
Ivy Allen, a fifth year UVic student who lived in residence for her first year in 2019, told the Martlet that she paid “something like eight or nine thousand, max … for the whole [eight month school] year.”
Her sister, who is entering her first year at UVic in the fall, is allegedly paying closer to $13 000 for an eight month term.
Allen said that now, living off-campus in Fairfield, she’ll pay the same amount of money for a year-long rental as her sister will for eight months.
“I feel like living in residence is supposed to be a cheaper option,” Allen said. “But now it’s the same, if not more [expensive than living off campus].”
While residential landlords in Victoria are subject to rent control under the Residential Tenancy Act (RTA), limited to a two per cent annual rent increase for existing tenants, the university does not have to adhere to any such limit.
“Student housing has been carved out from the normal housing in the community,” said Collins in an interview with the Martlet. He explained that student housing is exempt from the RTA.
According to the university, the benefits of UVic’s exemption from the RTA include designating housing for actively enrolled students, community safety, contract timelines that align with the school year, and timely dispute resolution independent of the RTA, which can otherwise take 12 months or more.
For new students, who are already overwhelmed by the transition into post-secondary education, on-campus living is like a safety net beneath the uphill climb of moving away from home.
Allen told the Martlet that last year, she was scammed out of a deposit by her landlord, a stressful experience that university on-campus living should promise an alternative to.
“It’s just such a [shame] that it isn’t easier for people to be living on campus where … that [kind of thing] wouldn’t be a concern for a 19 year old.”
“Students are a vulnerable group in our society and [in] our housing market in particular,” Collins corroborated.
While students may receive some benefits from their on-campus housing’s exemption from the Residential Tenancy Act, they remain unprotected in one significant way: financially.
“I think perhaps this was an unintended consequence of excluding student residences from the normal tenancy law — that they are potentially more vulnerable to rent increases,” said Collins.
As it stands, financial protections for students facing rising residence costs are nonexistent so long as UVic and other Canadian universities are exempt from the RTA. But what if they weren’t?
According to Collins, universities have been exempt from the RTA for so long that they’re inherently thought of in a different way from regular residential housing. Not only would it be a massive undertaking to bring on-campus housing into the fold of the RTA, it would also make little difference, Collins explained. As rent control only applies to existing tenancies, UVic would still be able to “set [the] rent at whatever level they believe they can get away with” when new students arrive each September.
So, according to Collins, if any positive change were to come from universities being included in the RTA, vacancy control, which prevents any increase in rent between tenants, would first need to be implemented. Otherwise, each new group of students would effectively be treated as a new tenancy by the university, undermining any progress the university’s inclusion in the Act would make.
The idea of an amendment to the RTA to include vacancy control or university housing seems far-off. Additionally, little pushback or organizing has been seen among students to address annual increases in dorm fees on a policy level, Collins explained.
So, for frustrated students, perhaps advocating for these issues may be a place to start.
