In Canada, the growing housing crisis has made it increasingly difficult for students to find affordable places to live while studying. Many have had to work multiple jobs and make substantial sacrifices to survive. While Canadian student unions have engaged in advocacy to improve housing conditions for students, such as calling for policymakers to develop a Canada Student Housing Strategy, I wonder if it would be possible for student unions to do even more to alleviate students’ housing challenges through direct service provision. More specifically, could student unions provide affordable housing directly to students?
The development of such an affordable housing service would be ambitious, but given what student unions in Canada have achieved when it comes to service provision, I would say it is not out of the realm of possibility. In my colleague Oleksii Zahreba’s overview of some of the rarest and most common student union services in Canada, the service provision capacities of these student democracies become apparent. Health insurance plans, subsidized public transit, food banks, and student-run businesses such as stores, eating establishments, and entertainment venues, which can easily become multi-million-dollar operations, are commonplace. If student unions can directly intervene to improve students’ health, food, and transportation circumstances, what would be stopping them from improving housing conditions for students as well?
Getting into any kind of housing or real-estate business is no doubt expensive, but I envision that a student union could start small and gradually increase the scale of its housing provision endeavours over time. First, like with most any student union service in Canada, a student union could initiate a referendum for a standing affordable housing levy. This fund should be enough to allow a student union to make enough within a few years for a down payment, perhaps 20% of the full purchase price as seems to be typically recommended, on a small property with multiple rental units. Maybe this is a building with a few floors or even a house with multiple rooms that can be rented out. I estimate that a levy that nets an amount in the tens of thousands of dollars a year, much lower than longstanding services mentioned above that can easily costs hundreds of thousands of millions annually, would be sufficient for this task.
The student union could then rent out the units at cost to provide students with the lowest rent price possible that still ensures the operation to be financially sustainable. This would be ideally at a rent price lower than for-profit competitors and university housing. Or, the student union could allow for a small bit of extra revenue to supplement the housing levy.
The rent from the student tenants should be enough to cover all property costs, with the housing levy acting as a reserve to shore up any unforeseen emergency costs that may arise. This would likely generate a reserve of excess revenue from the service that the student union can use to place down payments on additional properties and provide affordable housing to even more students.
I believe that if such a housing service could be successfully implemented, it would massively undercut private landlords and housing provided by postsecondary institutions, giving rise to a new low-cost housing regime run by students, for students. It would allow students to pursue postsecondary education who may not otherwise have been able to. It would reduce the amount of debt students accrue during their studies. Over time, if student unions can expand their housing service capacities to support large portions of the students they represent, it may even help drive rent prices down if private landlords and postsecondary institutions lower their rates to compete, which could have societal benefits beyond the student world.
Such a service would also greatly increase student unions’ financial assets and cement them as undisputed essential student service providers that substantially improve the quality of the higher education experience. Thus, if say a provincial or federal government tries to infringe on student unions’ autonomy, as Doug Ford’s Ontario Government has attempted with the failed Student Choice Initiative of the late 2010s and the more recent 2025 Supporting Children and Students Act that have both sought to make some student union service fees, student unions’ equivalent of taxation, optional, it could mean sending student housing and higher education more broadly into chaos. If student union housing services are not categorized as essential and opt outs are allowed, some students may not be able to attend postsecondary education. A student union-run housing service may be the twenty-first century innovation student unions need to demonstrate that they are a vital part of higher education that must be defended.
Internationally, student unions already provide such services. In the United Kingdom, the Lancaster University Students’ Union has its “very own student housing company, dedicated to providing Lancaster students with affordable accommodation.” From 1980-2026, the Aston Students’ Union managed The Green, a collection of 150 student affordable housing rental units that served around “6,750 students, 150 residents each year for 45 years, helping to save students millions of pounds in accommodation costs compared to the private market.” These examples pale in comparison to the Stockholms studentbostäder, a housing company established in 1958 by the Stockholms studentkårers centralorganisation (SSCO), a supra-campus student union representing around 100,000 students in Stockholm that elects the members of the housing company’s board. The value of Stockholms studentbostäder properties totals around 13.3 billion SEK, which equates to around $1.9 billion CAD at the time of writing.
I hope that this idea has helped convey just how powerful student unions in Canada are. By providing services that directly improve students’ lives, they do not always need to solely rely on advocacy and activism calling for other education and societal parties to enact change on students’ behalf. Instead, services allow student unions to not have to rely on non-students to make higher education better. A student union-run affordable housing service would build on Canadian student unions’ past service provision successes and take student unions to new heights.
