The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 1 - 62

Michelle Pidgeon * Chris Rogerson

outside the Vancouver area (e.g., Burnaby,
New Westminster, Surrey, Fraser Valley), rents
tended to be lower, and students had more
choice with respect to where they rented.
For example, students attending a university
located in a neighboring city had slightly lower
rents: a lower percentage of them, 47%, indicated that they paid $500 or more per month
in rent. Overall, based on the AHRP survey
results, those students who had dependents
and/or were married paid higher rents than
those who were single and/or did not have
dependents.
The EBI-CRA data indicated a trend: With
the rising costs of accommodations, students
felt more and more dissatisfied. Between
2007 and 2011, the cost of on-campus housing
increased annually. In 2007, 38.5% of respondents stated that they were somewhat
dissatisfied, dissatisfied, or mostly dissatisfied with the amount they were paying for the
quality of their residential experience; in 2009,
this dissatisfaction rose to 50%, and by 2011
it was at 100%. These rates demonstrate that
cost remains a primary hindrance for Aboriginal students with respect to their access to, and
satisfaction with, on-campus housing.

Relationships: Housing, Culture, and
Family Matters
More than 95% of participants in the AHRP
project agreed that housing was important
to varying degrees, ranging from some importance, to very important, to extremely
important. As the two following quotations
indicate, for those students who were also
parents, housing became important not only
for continuing their own studies, but also for

the support of their children's education and
overall well-being. As one participant stated,
"If I cannot find a clean, comfortable, and safe
place for me and my child, I may have to move
back home before my studies are complete."
Another participant had a similar comment:
"I feel that my children's school location and
where we live is important. I have to make
sure they have gone to the same school, so
they will be able to keep some life continuity."
One father in a sharing circle spoke about his
choice to have his family live in Vancouver,
even though it was more expensive, because
his children had made friends, and he didn't
want to relocate them and create the additional
stress of moving and making new friends.
Participants in the sharing circles continued to emphasize the important role that
family played in student success, given the large
number of Aboriginal students who have dependents and/or rely on their extended family
and community networks for support. As one
sharing circle participant noted, in the absence
of this support, students were moving around
and becoming disconnected from school:
Coming from a small community and being
more community oriented in terms of the
community-forming activities that you do
every day, how you interact with people . . .
then coming to a big city where none of these
connections and interconnections exist [is
significant]. Having to build that from scratch
when you never had to do that before . . .
[impacts us] . . . With students at this school,
I don't necessarily see that happening in
terms of where they are being housed. I see
a lot of students moving a lot of times while
they are in school.

T h e J o u r n a l o f C o l l e g e a n d U n i v e r s i t y St u d e n t H o u s i n g

The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 44, No. 1

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