Students will not be able to study in Rimouski, for lack of housing: “never seen” for the university

The housing crisis is such in Rimouski that hundreds of students will not be able to come and take their university courses at the start of the 2023 school year, due to a lack of available accommodation.

“We have students who have proper admissions, who have been dealing with finances and study permits for months, but when they tell us they have no accommodation, we advise them not to come,” warns Jean-François Ouellet, director of student community services at the University of Quebec at Rimouski (UQAR).

In this city of Bas-Saint-Laurent, the vacancy rate is barely 0.4%, whereas it would take at least 3% to have a balance.

Result: nearly 2000 foreign students must be contacted soon by the establishment, in particular to ensure that they have found accommodation for the start of the school year in September. And if they don’t have one, UQAR will dissuade them from coming to study with them.

“We’ll just have a few hundred [d’entre eux] who will succeed in really coming to study here. All the others [vont être] left behind because of the housing situation,” he laments.

This situation is obviously not specific to foreign students, since Quebecers and Canadians can no longer choose this university to study.

Complete

In March, the approximately 300 places available in the establishment’s student residences were already filled, in particular because the students who usually leave during the summer prefer to keep their room, for fear of not being able to relocate. Worse still, the waiting list even got longer this month.

“It’s unheard of,” said Mr. Ouellet.

To try to stem the problem, UQAR is actively seeking solutions, for example by transferring some of their students to their Lévis campus, located… 300 km from Rimouski.

“The housing crisis is much less exacerbated in Lévis, so we offered more than 200 students to study there, since certain programs are also offered there,” explains Mr. Ouellet.

The educational establishment also goes through the rental of rooms in a hotel complex, Habitå, in order to accommodate its students.

“In the past two years, we had reserved a dozen rooms for our students, but this year, we reserved 28 for our needs,” explains Mr. Ouellet.

Buildings

UQAR also hopes to be able to obtain funding to build a new student residence that would accommodate a hundred students.

“We have been working on this project for over a year, the plans are ready, we know the costs, but we have to attach the financing,” he concludes.

Well aware of the crisis affecting the municipality, the mayor of Rimouski, Guy Caron, promises to work to increase the supply of affordable housing, among others for students.

“We are also trying to facilitate the creation and construction of rental housing in the city center and outside to have a more adequate supply,” he maintains, indicating that the massive influx of new residents during the pandemic has made drop vacancy rates.

According to Mr. Caron, 2,500 to 3,000 units would have to be built to reach the equilibrium threshold of 3% vacancy rate in Rimouski.

Foreign students unable to find accommodation

Future students who dream of coming to Rimouski for several semesters are worried that they still have not found a place to live, when they plan to arrive in Quebec soon.

Clara Loiseau

The Journal of Montreal

“I have my tickets to arrive in July, but I don’t know if I’ll find accommodation, I don’t know anyone and the hotels are expensive,” laments Clarisse Samassi, a future student at the Université du Québec à Rimouski ( UQAR) 23 years old who will arrive from Abidjan, in Ivory Coast.

Although she started her search in March, it is impossible for her to find suitable accommodation. And the one who comes to do a master’s degree in people management in the workplace is not the only one.

Kader, who is also of Ivorian origin, had no idea that it would be so difficult to find an apartment in the city located in Bas-Saint-Laurent.

“We have no choice, we have to take the first accommodation we find,” laments the 29-year-old student, who comes to study the management of maritime resources and who prefers to give only his first name.

Stuck

With a budget of $1000, he hopes to find a 4 and a half with one of his friends, who has also been accepted at UQAR.

“The residences have been full since March 28, and otherwise everything is above our budget,” he worries.

The story is the same for Nathan Arhel, who must come to do a university exchange in mechanical engineering. The Parisian student has been desperately trying to find accommodation since April.

“I contacted several agencies whose university gave me the contact to help me, but either I do not have an answer or they are negative answers. It’s getting very stressful,” worries the young man, who has a budget of a maximum of $600 per month.