With the fall semester fast approaching, all 640 beds in the Université de Moncton residences are spoken for.
With 4,500 students attending the university annually, most of them are forced to look for private apartment rentals that are often unaffordable for students.
The university administration has put a call out on social media for people to open their homes to students seeking housing temporarily.
Sophie LeBlanc-Roy, interim co-director of Student Enrollment Management for the university, told Global News that the university was exploring all kinds of different options, including housing students as far away as Shediac, and arranging for transportation to and from the Moncton campus.
As well, they asked hotels for preferred rates for students.
She said the university has been in touch with property owners who have apartment buildings near campus.
“They have told us they are also full,” she said.
The monthly price of dorms ranges between roughly $400 to $800 a month, well below the market rate for apartments in Moncton.
Jean-Sébastien Légèr, president of the FÉÉCUM, the university’s student council, said in an interview on Wednesday that he believes the university administration should have started looking into these short-term housing solutions sooner.
“We have already addressed that situation as early as March. That is one of the first things that we talked about with the administration, was lack of housing and that problem going into September, which is in two weeks,” he said.
He believes the university needs to build more student housing.
“There’s a lack of student housing, there’s not really a supply in the private market for that special area of demand so the university needs to step up,” he said.
LeBlanc-Roy said building new dorms is an option on the table as the university looks for a long-term solution.
She said that prior to the housing crisis, she had never seen so much demand for on-campus housing, since Université de Moncton was typically regarded as a commuter school.
“They could have had waiting lists for a specific unit (…) but the dorms were only full at 75 per cent. So if somebody was stuck asking for a specific apartment style, well they could come into another unit. The problem that we have now, we are full to 100 per cent capacity and there is still a waiting list,” she said.
She said the call for people to rent rooms to students was also sent in a memo to university staff on Tuesday, and they have received some expressions of interest.
She said the university encourages any student having trouble finding housing to get in touch with administration as soon as possible.
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