VIU looking for people to rent rooms to students in housing crunch

Michael Witcomb, Vancouver Island University’s off-campus housing coordinator, is calling on Nanaimo residents to open up their spare rooms to students this fall. Photo provided by VIU.

University students across the province are looking for increasingly expensive accommodation as the school year gets set to start.

The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation found the average cost of a purpose built two-bedroom apartment in Nanaimo went from $1,360 a month in 2021 to $1,542 in 2022, a 9.5 per cent increase in one year.

A recent recruitment survey by Vancouver Island University found that affordability was a key reason cited by prospective students for choosing not to enroll at VIU.

Michael Witcomb, the off-campus housing coordinator for Vancouver Island University, is working to help students find affordable student housing.

Witcomb educates students, the majority of them arriving from other countries, about how to navigate Nanaimo’s tight rental housing market including managing their budgets, knowing their rights under the Residential Tenancy Act, and how to ensure they get their security deposits back.

But with a vacancy rate of 2.2 per cent Nanaimo can be a hard place to find an apartment on short notice. So Witcomb is calling on people in the community to open up their homes to students this fall.

“There are all sorts of people who have a spare bedroom and for whatever reason feel that it's a good opportunity to rent to a student,” he said. “It's a great way to bring some extra income into the household in times when all of our grocery budgets are being squeezed.”

Witcomb says that local residents who have rented to students have stayed in touch with their former tenants.

“We've had several lovely reports from landlords who stayed in touch with students,” he said. “Even one or two people have gone out to visit people when they've gone back to their home countries.”

“My job is just to appeal to anybody who's got a spare room in their house, and if they're wondering about perhaps bringing in some extra income they are very welcome to call me to have a chat.”

Witcomb says that anyone interested in renting a room to a student can go to places4students.com and list their room.

“There's any number of students getting in touch with me now saying, ‘I'm looking for somewhere to live,” he said. “There's a very good chance that you'll be welcoming someone into your home very soon.”

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.