On Wednesday, October 1, Vice President Student Issues Aidan Kallioinen spoke before a Joint Committee of the Finance and Corporate Services Committee and Planning and Housing Committee of Ottawa City Council to communicate student renters’ concerns and emphasize the need for greater city-postsecondary housing partnerships.
The full delegation can be viewed here: (1:50:35)
Full remarks:
I want to thank staff and councillors of the City of Ottawa for the opportunity to speak before today’s Joint Housing and Finance Committee. My name is Aidan Kallioinen, and today I speak as the Vice-President Student Issues of the Carleton University Students’ Association, which represents the needs of over 25,000 undergraduates at Carleton University.
We speak today to provide an insight to the student housing experience, particularly in the wake of the city’s newly unveiled Housing Acceleration Plan and the subsequent measures aimed at making Ottawa one of Canada’s most housing-friendly cities.
Our students are no strangers to the housing challenges present here in our city. In-fact, they are on the frontline of many of the city’s housing challenges. Many are newcomers, first-time renters, and subject to mistreatment by landlords or large-developers with the intent of demoviction or renoviction to jack rent pricing. They also bear the brunt of the systemic unaffordability of Ottawa’s rental market, predominantly living in the city’s most expensive neighbourhoods — those closer to college and university campuses and in relative proximity to accessible transit to school. Due to the higher turnover rate of student-renters, and the lack of a concrete system of vacancy control in the province, they often pay up to 25% more for the same unit when compared with other tenants. A lack of rent control means that rent in our neighbourhoods is whatever a market may bear, and the kinds of developments which replace single-unit density post-2018 often have students paying what might be considered near-luxury prices for very similar accommodations only a few short years ago.
Our vacancy rate here in Ottawa remains below healthy levels. We are behind on several important provincial and federal targets for housing development, though we are not alone. The steps taken and announcements made today are welcome to many of our students. Working to reduce or outright eliminate fees for non-profit
developers, prioritizing transit-oriented development, and developing a comprehensive public lands strategy are great directions aimed at addressing specific concerns in and around where students actually live.
Regardless, we speak to remind Councillors today that students are a unique demographic within this city. We have a systemic lack of access to quality housing supply in close proximity to university campuses, so a focus on promoting incentivized development in-and-around universities, as well as cross-collaboration with the postsecondary sector in-general, would be a welcome focus for students and those in university administration, beyond simply a focus on transit corridors. Residences and on-campus housing can hardly sustain increased demand for housing among students, emphasizing the need for increased off-campus capacity-building and partnerships. Working to speedily identify suitable public land and specific sites for which the actions recommended today would take effect would help to communicate your broader strategy with students and to help us realize the true potential of neighbourhoods near universities.
We thank you for the opportunity to speak today and encourage Council to both continue to listen to the concerns and needs of students, and most of all to be bold in its housing strategy over the next decade. This plan is a step in the right direction. Thank you.