UCalgary sees busy move-in day, breaks record for first-year student accommodations

The University of Calgary says it had more first-year students move into residence over the weekend than ever before.

Shane Royal, director of ancillary services at UCalgary, says a few years ago, residence services had the ability to house about 2,900 students. Housing scarcity in the city has left the school with no option but to get creative in creating accommodations.

“Short-term, a few things we’ve done is we’ve maximized the space within in our buildings in making some that were singles into doubles so we have increased space,” said he explained. “We’ve also signed an agreement with the Aloft Hotel to lease 51 rooms from them to increase space for our students to have housing.”

These changes have created around 200 new spots, meaning 3,100 students are living in UCalgary accommodations this year.

Students moved onto campus over the weekend, including 1,300 first-years. The school says this is a record.

“We’ve seen an increase in demand for residence across all our population — first years, upper years, graduate students,” Royal said. “Primarily, it’s a couple of factors that are doing that, obviously the scarcity of housing in the city right now.”

One student who spoke with CityNews said there’s lots of elements to consider when trying to find a place to live while going to school.

“I think some places are definitely affordability and location wise, either it’s too far away from campus or not close enough,” she said. “I think that’s definitely a big issue.”

Another said she knows people who are patiently waiting to hear if they made it off the waitlist.

“Some people are trying to find hotels until they can get places because they’re on lists,” she said.

Royal says there are 89 students still on the waitlist to get into residence.

“Depending how things go for the first couple of weeks, some of those students will get in because there may be a few no-show individuals for whatever reason,” he said.

Campus housing isn’t the only resource feeling the pressure — UCalgary says its student food bank is also seeing record-levels of usage.

“With the rise of inflation and food costs always increasing, it’s definitely something that we were expecting and something that as much as we prepare for it, it comes as a shock to see how many students are always in need,” said Naomi Bakana with the Students’ Union.

She adds that so far this year, there has already been a 40 per cent increase in food bank usage.