What are your options if you are a student looking for housing in Halifax two weeks before the fall semester begins?
First option: on-campus housing; MSVU, Dal and AST have a few rooms left.
Of the seven colleges and universities in Halifax, all but one—NSCAD—have student accommodations. However, as of Thursday, Aug. 22, most of these campus student housing buildings are full. At least, that’s the case at Saint Mary’s University and the University of King’s College—both of which are placing students on waitlists right now.
NSCC’s new 100-bed student residence building, which opened in July at its Akerley campus in Dartmouth, is also full.
Mount Saint Vincent University—just a quick bus ride from downtown—has 36 beds still available for the fall. The university's residences are open to any postsecondary students, not just the Mount’s. The residency application form is here, and general information on the residences is here.
Dalhousie, which has 2,500 beds in its Halifax residences, is at 99% capacity, as is the Atlantic School of Theology’s 96-bed residences, which mostly house students from other schools.
Information on applying for residence at Dal can be found here, and at AST can be found here.
Second option: off-campus housing
Here’s a list of resources that are available from each university and college in Halifax, with many suggestions repeated across each, and some from community housing services, too:
- Dal’s off-campus living guide
- The Dal Student Union’s housing resources, including bursary information
- NSCC’s off-campus housing site
- NSCC’s Living in Nova Scotia Resource Guide
- SMU’s off-campus housing guide
- NSCAD’s housing information guide
- NSCAD’s Housing in Halifax 2023-24 Guide
- MSVU’s Rental Viewing Checklist
- King’s’off-campus housing guide
- Nova Scotia’s Department of Community Services: Programs and Services for Students
- Welcome Housing: Support & Services
- Halifax Examiner’s Priced Out Resource List
NEW SECTION*Mariam Knakriah is the president of the Dalhousie Student Union. She tells The Coast that Dal students “have reported an average monthly rent of $1,300,” according to bursary applications submitted to the schools, and that “many [students] are forced to choose between continuing their education and affording housing.”
Says Knakriah, “finding housing is extremely difficult in Halifax,” which has a rental vacancy rate of 1%, and the lack of a centralized resource for student housing makes finding it even harder. “I think this is especially tough for international students, who often come with little understanding of their rights as renters or what housing conditions to expect in Halifax.”
As president of the DSU, Knakriah’s heard from students who opt to live farther and farther away, where rents are sometimes lower, and add 40 minutes to an hour of commuting one-way to school. She says that this increased amount of travel time can “significantly increase their stress and ability to focus academically.”
Those who find housing closer to campus, Knakriah says, “often they have to share their space with multiple roommates, often leading to overcrowded living conditions,” and that “this trend of normalizing overcrowded housing is becoming increasingly common in university life.”
As the fall semester inches closer, Knakriah calls on the provincial government’s Department of Advanced Education to engage directly with herself and other student leaders to gain insights into the housing crisis.
“The province has to start realizing the housing crisis in Halifax as a human rights violation,” she says. “We are still waiting for the government to release the province-wide Student Housing Strategy they promised back in 2021—we have yet to see anything.”
