Vancouver Island University is getting 266 new student-housing beds and a new dining hall in an $87.8-million project announced Friday on the Nanaimo campus.
The new nine-storey building, expected to open in the fall of 2025, will increase the number of on-campus beds to 802 from 536.
Construction is set to start next spring. Once the new beds open, the university will be able to meet its goal of offering on-campus housing to every first-year student, said VIU president Deborah Saucier.
“Secure, stable and affordable housing is essential for students to be successful at their studies,” she said. “We know that our students do much better when they live on campus.”
This month, VIU has a wait list of 300 students wanting to get into residence. In the past, VIU has put out calls to the community asking residents to open their homes to students. That helped, but the shortage of affordable places to live persists.
Some students are driving more than an hour for accommodation, Saucier said. Some are living in Duncan and Parksville.
Cole Reinbold, who is studying marketing at VIU, said the situation was so dire in the 2021 to 2022 school year that some students initially slept in the library and in their vehicles.
VIU staff worked with the two students in the library and helped line up housing for them, a university official said.
Having new beds “is just going to create opportunities for countless new VIU students to come,” said Reinbold, who is from Fort St. John and heading into third year at VIU.
The first-year guarantee of a bed “really pushes students to feel comfortable coming to VIU and coming to the Island knowing that there is going to be a place where there is a community waiting for them,” said Reinbold, adding it prevents isolation and helps students make life-long friendships.
Saucier said more on-campus won’t just help students. “[It] will actually be able to help the local rental market because there will be fewer students trying to compete for those limited spaces.”
The apartment vacancy rate was 1.6 per cent in Nanaimo in October 2021, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
The new residence complex is expected to have a common area for students to gather and study.
Saucier said that two levels of the building will be concrete and the other seven will be encapsulated mass timber.
The building will connect with the on-site geo-exchange system, which uses the former coal-mine-shaft system running under the campus.
The province is funding most of the project’s cost. Advanced Education and Skills Training Minister Anne Kang said Indigenous students and youth coming out of government care will receive priority for beds.
The province committed to building 8,000 student beds and is at 7,200 so far, she said.
On Monday, the province announced $3.3 million to make VIU more inclusive and accessible. The money will go to remove physical barriers to teaching areas, buildings and other parts of the campus.
That means students who want to stay in residence will have an accessible facility, Saucier said.
At the University of Victoria, an additional 398 students beds have been opened in a new residence for first-year students, raising the total number of beds on campus to 2,500.
UVic’s new eight-storey building also has a 715-seat dining hall that’s expected to dish out 10,000 meals per day.
A second student housing building at UVic is expected to open next summer with 385 new beds.
