Student influx adds to London’s housing crunch

It’s move-in weekend, as thousands of post-secondary students descend on London, Ont. to attend Western University and Fanshawe College.

Among them is Western student Em Shultz, who found a room in a house with five other students for $900 per month, plus utilities, near the Western campus.

It was the most affordable and safest option she could find.

“Even down Richmond, we have people being broken into all the time, [in the] downtown area,” she explained. “Students really value a safer community. It’s easier for us to live close to campus but with rents sky-rocketing it’s close to impossible to even find a house that’s affordable.”

Em’s mother, Clara Schultz said it’s getting more difficult every year to find suitable housing.

“It seems that we’re moving every year. Meaning, you think that your kid is going to move into this house, spend the rest of their three years at their residence, and that’s not the case,” she said.

Meantime, in the Fanshawe College neigbourhood, international student David Lee Dababa, from the Philippines, said finding an affordable place to live was the first hard lesson he’s learned in Canada.

“This year there are like 11,000 students, so finding rooms, houses, or maybe basements, are kind of hard,” he said.

According to one housing market researcher, rental rates in London have remained flat this year. But that’s not necessarily good news, because just one year ago rental rates took a massive spike, rising 20 per cent in a short period.

Mike Moffat, senior director of the Smart Prosperity Institute, said London’s vacancy rate is below one per cent.

“We’ve got another hot market this year,” said Moffat. “Not a lot of rental stock is available. That’s largely due to increasing enrolment at Fanshawe and Western. One bedroom apartments are going for about $1,750, two bedrooms about $2,100. So that’s a lot of money for a college or university student to have to shell out.”

Those who advocate for renters said competition from students makes it tough for Londoners at large who are trying to find affordable housing.

Claire Wittnebel, a leader with the London branch of ACORN Canada said one of the challenges is that there are no vacancy controls, so high turnover rental properties are often more lucrative than having long-term tenants.

“Landlords prefer having a lot of tenants that are short-term, having a lot of turnover because they can jack up the rents to whatever rates they want. And, as you know there are sky-rocketing rates in London so the students are just a prime target,” she explained.