"It smelled like urine": Accountability needed to tackle student housing crisis

"It smelled like urine": More accountability needed to tackle student housing crisis

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After sending dozens of messages to prospective landlords and property owners, Joseph Nguyen finally got a response.

But there was a catch.

“You have to come within 30 minutes,” Nguyen said, referring to a conversation he had with someone who’d posted a listing.

Like so many other students, Nguyen doesn’t drive. He had to ask his sister to take him to the showing; however, that’s not something he could do on a regular basis.

That’s just one of the problems that students face when it comes to housing.

Often, they’re stuck looking for places in areas far away from their campus, with commutes that take over an hour due to affordability constraints and a lack of availability.

Just before the school year began, on-campus housing at Calgary’s three biggest post-secondary institutions was full, with hundreds of students on waitlists for Mount Royal University (MRU), University of Calgary (UofC), and Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT).

UofC broke its own record for the number of students moving in earlier this year. It had previously set a new record in 2022.

Shortages and safety concerns

The shortage leaves students scrambling to find accommodation, and, like Nguyen, some settle for a less-than-optimal experience in a market that seemingly gets tighter and tighter year over year.

It’s something Nguyen says impacts their academics, lifestyle, and the student experience as a whole.

When he arrived at the house, however, he soon realized that transit would be the least of his worries.

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“It was mouse-infested, mouldy, unsafe, [had] broken windows and broken locks on the doors,” Nguyen said.

“And it was filled with people, there was a urine smell, it smelled like urine.”

Despite all of this, Nguyen signed a lease out of fear that he’d end up without housing for the school year.

But the situation had him thinking that something had to be done to fix this ongoing issue.

To combat this, the City of Calgary committed up to $25 million towards post-secondary student housing in its new housing strategy.

A “two-fold” solution

While more money from all levels of government will help the situation, one councillor says it isn’t the only fix.

“There are so many stories that we hear every day from students across the city across the country, of people knowing that they’re in a vulnerable position and taking advantage of that vulnerability by providing substandard living conditions,” said Councillor Courtney Walcott, who championed the strategy.

“The most significant thing that will benefit students alongside everyone else is simply just improving upon the Alberta Tenancies Act.”

A lot of the time, Walcott said, the stories that are heard have to do with either illegal or non-conforming types of housing.

He said the City’s strategy will help students and the general public with its secondary suite incentive program, but they can’t do it alone.

“The City can’t change the Tenancies Act, but we can tell the Province exactly what changes we would require that will help create better and safer conditions,” Walcott said.

“That includes things like both rent control, but it also includes bolstering Alberta Health Services, their ability to do property inspections; it’s about changing the Tenancies Act to strengthen tenants’ rights when there’s a landlord-tenant dispute.”

Nguyen echoed that sentiment, saying that there needs to be more measures in place to hold people accountable.

“The solution is twofold. And at the end of the day, what we want to do is change the behaviour of landlords,” he said.

“Not just that, but implementation too, so what does that look like in practice, and how is accountability measured.”

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