City Waterloo and Student Housing

: When will the calamities end According to a recent town and gown committee report for the City of Waterloo, current demand for student housing sits at 31,429 beds, according to The Waterloo Record. Total supply of rental units is 32,625 beds, for a surplus of 1,200 beds. Related Stories Universities, students say Waterloo... Waterloo student housing surge may... Waterloo students get all the... Kitchener can learn lessons on... Now, however, we're told the city may soon suffer from the only thing worse than a shortage of student beds — an oversupply. New projects in the planning or construction phase could push it even higher. David McMurray, vice-president of student affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University, claimed student housing vacancies "would not contribute to the success of students." Beyond the devastating prospect of students living lonely lives and failing exams, a Record editorial headlined "Beware of a glut of student housing" lamented that the entire Northdale neighbourhood near both campuses could become "a forest of towers with too few occupants." It all sounds like some bizarre, end-of-days movie script in which the last student left on Earth battles mutant wolves in an abandoned city while struggling to maintain a grade-point average sufficient to get into grad school. This potential tsunami of surplus student housing has local university officials worried. "If we get into a situation where we've got a lot of oversupply, then you end up with empty rooms or situations where people living together don't know each other because they didn't intend to move in together," Chris Read, associate provost-students at the University of Waterloo, told The Record. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.