UBC to build 4,800 new student housing beds for $1.4 billion

UBC's The Houses of the Ones Belonging to the Saltwater (left), Exchange (centre), and Walter Gage (right) student residences. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

The shortage of student housing, especially on-campus residence options, accounts for a sizeable share of Metro Vancouver’s housing affordability and supply crisis.

With a growing general population and a larger international and out-of-region domestic student population in need of available attainable housing, there is increasingly more competition within the limited supply of general market rental housing in both secured (buildings dedicated for rental housing) and unsecured (such as condominiums and basement suites that are rented out) forms.

More competition directly leads to upward pressure on rents, of course. The rental vacancies in the region are currently hovering at or below 1%.

This is also greatly exacerbated by strong immigration volumes and how a growing number of households who are priced out from buying a home are also now turning to rentals. And with the Bank of Canada’s heightened policy interest rate leading to unfavourable borrowing costs, this has added even more pressure to rental housing demand from prospective homebuyers who are now delaying buying their first home.

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And those who are unable to find on-campus housing options often resort to seeking off-campus options, which in turn creates more competition within the general rental housing market.

All the while, some individuals who cannot find affordable housing options off-campus are increasingly trying their luck for the university-operated, on-campus options, which are at below-market rates.

All of this is a vicious cycle driven by numerous input factors.

UBC The Houses of the Ones Belonging to the Saltwater student residence

UBC’s The Houses of the Ones Belonging to the Saltwater (left) and Exchange (right) student residences. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

The exponential growth of the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) on-campus student housing waitlist provides yet another indicator of the region’s housing woes.

According to UBC, its on-campus student housing waitlist peaked at 3,200 students in 2010. It grew to over 6,000 students in 2019, and then to over 8,000 students in 2022.

Over the same period in the last 12 years, UBC built a combined total of 5,550 new student residence beds at its Vancouver and Okanagan campus.

According to UBC, it is now the largest university provider of student housing in Canada. With Tuesday’s opening of Brock Commons North, the university’s newest student housing building with 316 beds, the total number of student beds at the Vancouver campus is now 13,205. There are also 2,120 beds at the Okanagan campus, which puts UBC’s total on-campus student housing capacity at 15,325 beds.

brock commons north south ubc august 12 2023

UBC’s Brock Commons North (left), and the Arts Student Centre and Brock Commons South (right), as of August 12, 2023. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Over the next 10 to 15 years, UBC has plans to build 4,800 new student residence beds, including 4,300 at the Vancouver campus and 500 at the Okanagan campus.

“The demand for student housing is increasing at a faster rate than we’re able to build and make the investment,” Andrew Parr, the associate vice president of Student Housing and Community Services of UBC, told Daily Hive Urbanized in an interview.

“More students want to live on campus than we have capacity for, even though that capacity has been growing.”

This week’s official opening of Brock Commons North will be followed up by the completion of Brock Commons South in late Spring 2024, which will provide an additional 282 student beds.

The next major student housing project being eyed by the university is the redevelopment of Place Vanier Residence.

Place Vanier, located at the northwest corner of the campus, was largely built in the 1960s. Parr says that although it is still in good condition because of maintenance and renovations, it is starting to show its age in terms of its amenities and quality.

Parr says Place Vanier in its current configuration has very low density on the significant parcel of land it occupies. The net gain in new student beds could be massive — the goal is to at least double the number of beds over the multi-phased redevelopment to generate new accommodations for first-year undergraduate students.

Place Vanier student residence. (UBC)

Earlier this year, the university conducted the procurement process for securing an architectural firm to begin design work on the Place Vanier project. Procurement files show the redevelopment would replace the original buildings, but retain the newer Korea House and Tec De Monterrey House buildings constructed in the early 2000s. Both newer buildings account for about 400 of the 1,400 beds found across Vanier Place’s complex of 13 buildings.

Another major project would be a new complex that focuses on the graduate student experience, including student housing specifically dedicated to these students. Parr says St. John’s College — sitting on a large parcel on the west side of the campus, located between the Place Vanier and Marine Drive residences — would be demolished for such a project, in collaboration with the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.

The existing St. John’s College at UBC. (Google Maps)

9770 King George Boulevard Surrey UBC campus

Artistic rendering of the potential redevelopment concept for the University of British Columbia campus at 9770 King George Boulevard, Surrey. (UBC)

The university also has plans to build a mixed-use satellite campus tower in downtown Kelowna with about 92,000 sq ft of academic space in the lower levels and 500 units of student housing with over 600 beds in the upper levels.

The 45-storey tower received the municipal government’s approval last year, and it is expected to be completed towards the end of this decade.

He added that if the university were to acquire property outside the Vancouver campus in the Vancouver Westside neighbourhood, it would be challenging to build new student housing while also keeping rents affordable due to the high cost of land.

UBC’s 2050 master plan for its Vancouver campus outlines how academic space and student housing capacity will grow, with the campus lands seeing intensified and densified uses. Over the coming decades, the floor space dedicated to academic uses could grow by 20%, and added student housing and the redevelopment of some university neighbourhoods for a range of housing tenures could add 24,000 more residents.

550 doyle avenue kelowna downtown ubc campus hcma june 2022

June 2022 revised concept of the new UBC Okanagan campus tower at 550 Doyle Avenue in downtown Kelowna. (HCMA Architecture + Design/UBC)

UBC Vancouver campus 2050 master plan concept: Tower-based Acadia redevelopment, along with new academic and student housing buildings. (UBC)

While there are no land acquisition costs involved for UBC’s on-campus student housing projects at the Vancouver and Okanagan campuses, construction costs have ballooned, especially after the pandemic.

The 5,550 new UBC student beds that were built in the wave between 2010 and 2022 cost about $670 million or roughly $121,000 per bed.

The newest student housing building, Brock Commons North, which carries student housing uses for over 90% of its useable floor area, incurred a cost of $59 million or an average of about $187,000 per bed.

To achieve the future wave of building 4,800 beds, according to the university, the estimated cost is currently pegged at about $1.4 billion or approximately $292,000 per bed — more than double the cost of building the previous comparable number of beds.

To put that in further perspective, UBC’s total estimated $1.4 billion cost for its new student housing strategy far exceeds the $1.025 billion the provincial government has set aside to help support post-secondary institutions build on-campus student housing, including the initial $450 million from the 2018 BC Budget to cover part of the cost of 5,000 beds, and a further $575 million from the 2023 BC Budget for thousands more.

According to the provincial government, as of earlier this year, about 7,800 student beds are already built or underway, as part of a plan to catalyze 12,000 new beds province-wide. According to one previous estimate, there was a shortage of 14,300 student beds in Metro Vancouver alone in 2019.

Post-secondary institutions across BC, especially in Metro Vancouver, are currently undergoing an on-campus student housing building boom, and some campuses are seeing their very first student housing projects.

UBC has benefited from this recent program of provincial funding, with the university receiving $18.7 million towards the $25 million cost of building its 2020-completed, 220-bed Skeena Residence at the Okanagan campus.

Skeena Residence at UBC Okanagan. (UBC)

BCIT Tall Timber Student Housing Burnaby

Artistic rendering of the Tall Timber Student Housing tower at BCIT Burnaby. (Perkins&Will/BCIT)

August 2020 artistic rendering of 2055 Purcell Way at Capilano University in North Vancouver District. (HDR Architecture Associates)

douglas college student housing 808 royal avenue new westminster

Artistic rendering of the new Douglas College student housing and academic building at 808 Royal Avenue, New Westminster. (Stantec Architecture/Douglas College)

UBC’s student housing system is self-funded through the rent paid by students. But Parr notes that the inflationary environment and economic challenges are straining the pro forma they use. Moving forward, he says, they are now taking larger debt to fund the cost of construction, compared to the previous wave of projects.

At the same time, Parr emphasizes that the university maintains below-market student rents as part of its mandate. He estimates an average bedroom provided by their student housing system offers a rent that is 20% to 25% below-market, and the gap between market rates and the student housing rents only continues to grow with time.

It is all relative; at UBC’s brand new Brock Commons North residence, a room in a four-bedroom share suite is $1,142 per month, and a studio is $1,380 per month. In contrast, according to Rentals.ca’s July 2023 data, the average rent for a one-bedroom unit in Vancouver reached $3,013 (a 2.3% month-over-month increase, and a 16.2% increase year-over-year increase), and a two-bedroom unit now averages at $3,918 per month (a 1.4% month-over-month increase, and a 15.7% year-over-year increase).

Unlike the vast majority of general market rental housing supply, student residences are furnished. And as student housing, they provide a range of in-building amenities and services, including programming and supports that are unique to the university campus living experience.

“We’re limited by the increases that we can provide from remaining below-market and really striving to keep our rates as low as possible,” continued Parr, while citing Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s 2022 data that shows rents for secured market rental housing jumped by 27% after the turnover of tenants. There was also an 11% increase in the overall rental market last year.

“We’re not providing an 11% increase, so our gap is growing between the market and our rents. We’re falling further behind market,” said Parr.

10262 133a Street Surrey Bus Layover Facility

The bus layover facility under UBC Exchange student residence, serving TransLink’s UBC bus exchange. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

UBC Exchange Residence. (Picture and Color Media/UBC)

UBC Exchange Residence. (Picture and Color Media/UBC)

As announced earlier this year, the student housing system will see some of the largest year-over-year rent increases in memory, with 2023/2024 school year increases ranging between just over 3% and 8%. Parr explains the average increase will be 6%, with most being within 4% to 6%, a few as high as 8%, and the bottom end of the scale being 3.25%. This depends on unit type, with family housing and older buildings at the lower end of the range, and newer, high-demand buildings at the higher end of the rate increase.

This increase comes after a reprieve of no increase over the first two years of the pandemic. It is needed to cover the inflationary impacts on the cost of operating the student residences, and the need to generate new revenue to maintain existing facilities and help cover the cost of new additional student residences. Previous UBC Board of Governors reports note major costs also occurred during the height of the pandemic; at the start of the 2020/2021 school year in September 2020, the occupancy rate of the Vancouver campus’ student housing supply was just 44%.

The growing living costs of Metro Vancouver and other cost pressures from the inflationary environment appear to be pushing more UBC students into a state of food insecurity.

Earlier this year, UBC’s on-campus AMS Food Bank projected it was well on track to see a total of nearly 16,000 food bank annual interactions over the 2022/2023 fiscal year — more than twice as many as the 2021/2022 fiscal year, and over 16 times more than the pre-pandemic 2018/2019 fiscal year.

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