BU students struggle amid housing crunch

Living spaces have become hard to come by for Brandon University students due to rising rents and limited options.

One student is set to move into a one-bedroom apartment later this week that will cost her about $1,500 a month. She only got approved for the apartment after her first round of applications came up empty because her income wasn’t high enough.

“I was baffled by how expensive everything was and how tough it was to get into an apartment,” said third-year BU student Rachel Bergen.

“I do have a part-time job, but I’m not making as much as I guess apartment people are looking for, and so that is a struggle.”

Bergen said the $1,500-a-month price tag was “the lowest one I could find” and is out of her price range. She said she will be going into debt as she continues classes.

She decided to move out of the BU residency because communal living in close quarters with other students “was too much.”

Another student said he has been trying to find a place so he can move out of his parents’ home, but hasn’t had any success.

“There’s very little availability for any individuals, and they’re also overpriced,” said fourth-year student Kirill Sloane.

He said the search for an affordable place has not gone well.

“I applied to many places. At least seven of them were scams. I only got one showing and just never heard back from them again,” Sloane said.

“Very low availability, very high price.”

He said some of the scams have been from people posing as landlords that are trying to get too much personal information, too fast.

A spokesperson for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation wasn’t available to give an interview on the state of housing in Brandon, but did give rental statistics going back to 1990.

As of last October, Brandon had a 1.5 per cent vacancy rate, the lowest since 2018.

The average rent was $1,055 a month, the highest prices ever and nearly $100 more than the year before.

Michael Barrett, executive officer of the Brandon Area Realtors, said the rental market has always been tight in the city because of the presence of BU and Assiniboine College, but that things have gotten even tighter recently.

He said as a realtor, he knows more about people buying homes than renting, but that it’s all intertwined.

“Certainly the housing markets, it’s tight. It’s tighter than we’ve seen,” Barrett said.

Higher home prices make it harder for first-time buyers to enter the market, he said, in turn making it harder for people to find a place to rent.

“They’re paying higher rents and they’re trying to save, but their propensity to save decreases when rents go up, so it makes it harder and harder to get out of that cycle,” Barrett said.

He said there has been a “slow and steady” increase in costs for homes in the city.

Ericka Blair, a first-year student at BU, said students make a lot less money than universities think they do.

“University itself is obviously really expensive, so stacking that on top of bills is super hard,” she said.

“Students don’t want to get full-time jobs, and with what companies are paying for wages now, minimum wage doesn’t really cover costs of things at the moment.”

She said if you’re a student who isn’t from a wealthy family, living in dorms is “pretty hard to do.”

“I researched dorms before I moved here, obviously. They are pretty expensive from what I can tell,” she said.

Jackie Nichol, ancillary services manager for BU, said the dorms are “very market comparable,” and that this is the first year dorms have all been rented out since before the COVID-19 pandemic.

BU has just under 300 spots for people in residence, she said. The occupancy rates often fluctuate year over year.

“It really depends on the trends of the academics and stuff, and obviously, probably a little bit of the housing market, like you’re seeing right now. There’s ebbs and flows.”

On Friday, people were on a waiting list to get a dorm room, but that list was down to zero people on Monday.

Nichol said BU does everything it can to combine students into rooms, so people have a place to stay.

Kesha Haulder, another student at BU, said the city needs to do a better job of advocating for housing in Brandon.

“This housing crisis is not something that just came up, it’s been a thing for a while,” she said.

Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett didn’t immediately return a call for information and comment on Monday.

Bergen said while she’s no longer living in dorms, a friend of hers is, and is also going into debt because of the high prices.

“She says that she hates it — it’s very convenient for schooling. But she’s said the same thing, like she’s going into debt as well,” Bergen said.

She said being a student definitely puts her at a disadvantage when looking for a place to rent.

“It’s just causing a lot of people to go into debt that we already don’t need because we’re already paying for school.”

» alambert@brandonsun.com