UPEI officials asking students without housing not to come this fall

The University of Prince Edward Island is asking students who have been unable to find housing to defer or delay their studies at the campus this autumn.

The fall semester begins Sept. 7 and there are still 400 students on the waiting list for residence. Of those, officials say approximately 150 have nowhere to live.

"If they haven't found a place to live, we are saying, 'Please don't come, please defer, come in the winter, come next fall,'" says Laura O'Laney, UPEI's acting director of ancillary services, who has been dealing with a lot of anxious phone calls and emails. 

"That's really disappointing for some of them, and some of them have decided to come anyway."

Earlier this week, the university reached out to Islanders in general and its own faculty and staff specifically in an effort to find housing for students studying at the campus this fall.

"There's a lot of tears from students and parents sometimes," O'Laney said. 

"They thought this would be the easy part. They thought that the transition to the academics would be the hard part, and unfortunately it's just been more stressful than people anticipated, trying to find a place to live," she said.  

The university's public plea for help has resulted in being able to place 10 to 20 students, O'Laney said. 

"I know everybody is doing what they can to help us out," she said.

"Even if people could take someone for a month or a couple of months until sort of things open up — or at least to help them as they transition here while they're looking for housing , if they haven't been able to get over here and actually meet landlords — I know that would that would really help."

She herself is taking in a student from Japan. 

• Have housing and want to help? For homestays or off-campus housing, email homestay@upei.ca or offcampushousing@upei.ca, or call 902-894-2850

'Really hard' to tell students

Accommodations posted through the university's off-campus housing website are being snapped up by students within an hour of being posted. 

The university is looking for anything from hotel and motel rooms to rooms in private homes. 

UPEI also administers a paid home-stay program under which students get room and meals and a family-type atmosphere in a local home.

Some students have already arrived and are staying in motels while they search for accommodations. O'Laney hopes to find accommodations for those students so "we'll be able to get through this semester."

This year is just not what we expected, with COVID ending and more students wanting to come because they had been studying at home the last couple of years ... not ideal for us for sure.- Laura O'Laney

She said telling students not to come is "really hard."

"This year is just not what we expected, with COVID ending and more students wanting to come because they had been studying at home the last couple of years ... not ideal for us for sure." 

O'Laney notes lack of student housing is a problem for universities across Canada. 

A new 260-bed residence is under construction at UPEI but won't be ready until the fall of 2023.