SHHS Expands First Year Housing Guarantee
The news coming out of student housing recently has been nothing short of wonderful. On Tuesday, the university announced the creation of the Student Housing Financing Endowment ^[1], which funnels profits made by UBC Properties Trust directly into providing debt financing for new student housing projects. It’s hard to understate the importance of this announcement. It provides dedicated funding to student housing, allowing those projects to jump to the very top of UBC’s priority list, increasing the number of residence spots as quickly as they can be built. As the UBC strategic plan is fond of saying: “It’s easy enough to make a promise, but it takes commitment to see it through.” This is a very deep commitment to meeting the promise of 50% of undergrads housed on campus and it’s exciting to watch it get started.

In another fantastic change, two months ago SHHS quietly expanded their First Year Housing Guarantee ^[2]. Previously there had been a geographical restriction excluding students from the lower mainland from the guarantee but given the excessive commute times from the suburbs many of those students may as well have been from out of town. That restriction has been removed and now almost all first year students coming in directly from high school are guaranteed residence at Totem or Vanier, regardless of where they are from. It’s another exciting change, made possible by the opening of 566 new beds at Totem in time for September.

Guaranteeing residence to all first year students acts as an added incentive in recruiting students to UBC, giving all incoming first years the opportunity to have a holistic university experience, and relieves a lot of stress for students coming from outside the lower mainland who will not have to arrange alternate accommodations from far away. It also acts as a bonus to those students living in the GVRD who can use the time they would have spent commuting, upwards of an hour and a half for many, for studying and getting involved in university life. If we were AMS Confidential, Andrew Parr would be our #1 dreamboat Admin crush.

And one final piece of news on the student housing front: SHHS will be taking over the operation of Fraser Hall from UBC Properties Trust. UBCPT will still own the property, but SHHS will lease it from them. However, the way the residence operates is not expected to see any outward changes.