Student housing is a piece in the housing crisis puzzle plaguing Halifax and Nova Scotia. On Monday July 22, the Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) Akerley Campus officially opened a new 100-bed student housing building that students will begin moving in to this August, for classes starting in September.
The building at Akerley is modern, LEED certified for “green” building and is Rick Hansen Foundation certified for accessibility. Each room has its own keycard access, and there is at least one bathroom per unit—with four-bedroom suites providing two.
However, students looking for a place to live on campus this fall will have to look elsewhere: the new 100-bed, $24 million student housing building is already full.
Kathleen Cameron, NSCC’s manager of external relations, told The Coast Monday that in October 2023, Akerley’s total enrolment of both new and returning students was 981. However, the upcoming fall 2024 enrolment figures won’t be provided until Oct. 1, which is how it happens each year. Said Cameron, “we are still enrolling students for the fall and would not be providing an estimate in the meantime.”
For NSCC students who have secured one of the 100 beds in the first-ever on-campus housing building, the cost of a room ranges from $3,801 to $4,430 per term, from a room in a four-bedroom suite to a single room, respectively. This includes Wi-Fi, parking, utilities and $500 “dining dollars,” which can be used at several options on campus, including a full-service cafeteria.
Nova Scotia’s minister of advanced education, Brian Wong, was asked at Monday’s press conference whether paying between $950 to $1,107 in rent per month is affordable for students.
“When we look at the market, and we look at the fact that [students] only have to rent for eight months of the year, I believe it certainly makes it more affordable,” said Wong. Students can choose to “save money and start getting paid earlier by accelerating [their] learning,” if they choose to do so, said Wong, through pilot projects with the province like the Early Childhood Educator Program at NSCC.
Wong said the provincial government is focused on saving costs to students by accelerating learning in higher education.
“Why I like NSCC programs so much is that they're [offering] one and two-year programs,” said Wong. “If you're in a skilled trades program, you would join the apprenticeship stream and you start getting paid right after that.” Wong said this relieves the cost to students who are only then paying for tuition, housing, student fees while not working for a maximum of two years. “That's why we've invested so much in trying to get students the education that they deserve faster…where a 12-month program becomes six [months] and a two-year program becomes one.”
When asked whether student housing is being built fast enough in the province, Wong said Monday that “we're building housing as fast as we can build right now.”
The new housing at NSCC Akerley took two years to build, he said. Wong said that is because NSCC is “an arm of government, [we’re] able to move more quickly on any NSCC project or programs than we could if we were dealing with the university sector.”
A provincial student housing strategy is still forthcoming, said Wong, however he told reporters that it will be released at some point.
Student housing projects help “free up critical housing stock” in the HRM, said Wong. “We are going as fast as we can and we will do what it takes in order to make it better for students and everyone.”
Echoing the words of minister of environment and climate change, Timothy Halman, from earlier that morning, Wong said “the way to help relieve the housing prices is to build more—and this is affordable housing for students.”
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