Calgary post-secondary students scramble to find housing as dorms fill up

Post-secondary students are heading back to class in just a couple of weeks, but many are still scrambling to find a place to live.

It’s another year where Calgary’s housing crisis has seeped onto University campuses.

Mark Keller, the Director of Resident Services at Mount Royal University, says it’s the third year they are expecting all 950 dorm rooms to be spoken for.

“It’s been a challenging couple of years with the rental market in Calgary,” says Keller. “We’re doing the best we can to get as many students in as possible.”

He says the school has a waitlist of fewer than 40 people as of Tuesday.

“We’re hopeful that we can get through the list,” he says.

All 3,100 University of Calgary dorms are spoken for. It’s the fifth year that the school has had no dorm vacancies.

The university tells CityNews they were able to clear their waitlist on Monday, compared to this time last year when there were 76 students waiting.

“The assumption could be made that students are choosing to find off-campus housing because they know that residences have been full for the last couple of years,” says Julia Law with UCalgary’s student union. “Enrolment numbers are also going down.”

She says most of the students who end up on waitlists are third and fourth years, since first year students are guaranteed housing if they apply before May 1.

“From there, they are left to their own devices to find something off-campus, or they enter the lottery system for residence, that’s where most of the waitlist comes from,” says Law.

“Affordability as it is is already an uphill battle, especially for students. They have to balance their finances to survive while also balancing tuition.”

The two Calgary universities say the situation is fluid and they are both still accepting applications for residence.

A previous version of this story said the University of Calgary currently has a waitlist for residences — the waitlist was cleared this week. The story also noted last year’s waitlist at the same time was 1,000 students — it was 76.