Queen’s residence not guaranteed after April 2024 Ontario

Housing Minister promises student support at Queen’s Park

Mikella Schuettler Assistant News Editor

First-year to doctoral students are scrambling to find housing as Kingston’s supply struggles to keep up with demand.

First-year students accepted after April 2024 won’t be guaranteed residence for the 2024-25 academic year, while graduate students struggle to focus on academics amid rising costs and stagnant salaries.

“The university will continue to offer a residence commitment to most first-year students in the coming years,” the University wrote in a statement to The Journal.

Queen’s said the ongoing JDUC construction and Gordon-Brockington House renovations, which will temporarily decrease total available beds, and the shift from guaranteed residence.

First-year students accepted after April will be entered into a lottery for the remaining residence beds. Queen’s supports off-campus students through the First Year

Off-Campus Community.

This year the application portal for the Queen’s community housing, An Clachan and John Orr Tower, totaling 383 rooms, was overwhelmed by demand and had to be shut down. For SGPS President Devin Fowlie, the University is worsening the housing crisis by increasing its enrollment intake targets.

“If [Queen’s] wants to bring more students in, they have to consider what the implications are on the housing market,” Fowlie said in an interview with The Journal.

Graduate students living in Queen’s community housing tend to stay for multiple years, meaning few rooms go ‘on the market’ each year, explained Fowlie. Many graduate students have families and can’t realistically live in multi-student homes.

“I don’t think Queen’s can continue to be a top tier research institution, if it’s students are constantly under mental stress from these sorts of—housing—pressures,” Fowlie said.

Kingston rent prices ranked the eighth highest in Canada, according to a 2023 Kijiji study.

“We’ve heard from some students who’ve had to leave their programs because of financial pressures,” Fowlie said.

Base funding for PhD programs is $20,000 a year in compensation from the University, intended to cover their cost of living and their tuition.

Packages have not increased with inflation. The packages were last increased by $2,000 in 2018. The Tri-Council Graduate Scholarships, awarded by the federal government, haven’t increased since 2003.

“Students are being forced to choose between putting food on the table and having […] a roof over their head,” Fowlie said.

Lori Oliver, a political studies PhD candidate, published a report on the housing crisis in her role as chair of PSAC 901’s Affordable Housing Working Group in June. The report cited over 90 per cent of graduate students spend more than 30 per cent of their monthly earnings on housing.

“It really has been a struggle to get the University to realize the difficulty that grad students are facing,” Oliver said in an interview with The Journal.

From Oliver’s perspective, Queen’s hasn’t taken action to alleviate the pressures of an unaffordable housing market.

“It’s not a good feeling to live so precariously when the university is such a wealthy and renowned institution,” Oliver said.

Queen’s, the City of Kingston, and the Ontario government all claim to be stepping in.

Queen’s Off Campus Living Advisor Adam King provides advice and resources to Queen’s students navigating the housing market. Queen’s recently hired Christopher Akol to join King’s office. He will focus on talking to graduate students with families, about housing possibilities.

“Students come to me feeling anxious about finding accommodations and then walk away from our meeting confident,” King said in a statement to The Journal.

The University brought 334 new residence beds online last year with the building of the Endaayaan–Tkanónsote residence. The residence—new last year—temporarily compensates for the beds lost to the JDUC renovation which is set to re-open next year.

“Housing affordability is not an issue that can be resolved overnight. It takes collaboration among Queen’s campus colleagues, as well as with the City of Kingston and the Province of Ontario,” King said.

Queen’s Rector Owen Crawford-Lem thinks solutions on the housing shortage lie at the hands of the City of Kingston and the Ontario government.

“There are a lot of legislative and policy [tools] that could be done to protect students,” Crawford-Lem said in an interview with The Journal.

Last year Crawford-Lem, along with student consultancy group CREO solutions, collected informal data on student’s housing experiences at Queens, to inform future action. For Crawford-Lem, the data showed the living conditions of housing are just as important as affordability.

“There are always concerns with housing affordability […] what we’re really looking into at Queen’s is the condition of the houses, and what can be done to hold landlords accountable,” Crawford-Lem said.

At the provincial level Ontario Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs Steve Clark, capped the Ontario rent increase guideline at 2.5 per cent for 2024, which is below the rate of inflation.

Students who found housing before the onset of rent inflation, and reside at the same address, will benefit the most from the cap. Students entering the market now, or who move often, remain vulnerable to soaring rent prices.

“We are putting students first by keeping tuition frozen […] and getting shovels in the ground to build affordable housing,” Clark said in a statement to The Journal.

“We are committed to making housing more accessible for hardworking Ontarians and addressing the supply crisis.”