When student housing was hard to come by in Vancouver
In 1981, there wasn't much available for students and what was available was pretty expensive
Won't somebody please think of the children?
Or at least, university-age children trying to find temporary housing in pricey Vancouver?
That was the plea of some university officials in 1981, when housing for students was both costly and scarce.
"The apartment vacancy rate in Vancouver is the lowest in the country, nearly zero per cent," the CBC's Russ Patrick reported on The National in early September of 1981.
"And what is available is very expensive."
Ditto for rooms in private homes, which were also much more costly than they used to be.
A 25 to 35 per cent jump
"It would seem that prices are up, generally 25 to 35 per cent," said Michael Davis, who was then the student housing director at the University of British Columbia.
"That may be a reflection of mortgages that people are having to renew, or it may be some instances of people believing that the market supply situation allows them to charge more for accommodation."
The universities didn't have enough on-campus housing to fix the problem either.
At UBC, the school then had only half as many beds as they did students requesting them, according to what Patrick reported.
The squeeze was even tighter at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., where some 1,500 students had applied for housing, yet just 220 beds were then available.
'Just a room — that's it'
The pressure to solve the housing problem prompted UBC to hand out 50,000 copies of a flyer that urged Vancouver residents to consider renting to a student.
Some of the people taking advantage of that opportunity weren't exactly offering top-notch accommodations, either.
Such as basement suites — some of which were going for $175 a month, which is the equivalent of about $570 in 2024 — that may or may not have included a bathroom.
"Just a room — that's it," said Judy Medley, the off-campus housing director at UBC.
"Nothing else, no cooking," she added. "Not even a hot plate. This is just a room to sleep in, a bedroom."
Patrick said local university officials were concerned about what could happen if the housing shortage persisted.
"The people who run B.C.'s colleges and universities are worried their enrolments are going to drop if out-of-town and out-of-province students stop coming to the west coast because of the scarcity and high cost of housing," he said.
