Photo: Contributed
Tom Macauley
A candidate for Kelowna city council is suggesting UBC Okanagan and Okanagan College impose caps on enrolment.
Tom Macauley sent an email in response to a story by Castanet last week on the housing crunch for new students at UBCO. McCauley says that construction companies are facing a shortage of skilled trades, due in part to companies not being able to relocate workers from other cities and provinces because there is simply nowhere to rent.
He argues that Kelowna city council needs to call a meeting with the two post-secondary schools to urgently discuss the matter of capping enrolment to alleviate stress on the rental market.
“I’m not even saying that we’ve got to slow the growth forever. What I’m saying is we should propose that we talk to UBC and say hey, we’ve gotta, you know, curb recruitment from out of province, or from out of the area for now.
“You know, you can focus on local, but you guys really need to put limits on how many people you’re bringing into our community. Because really, we’re stressed to the max.”
Macauley says it’s not just people in trades struggling to find a place to live.
“It’s families and single moms and everybody who’s trying to get a reasonable place to live for a reasonable rent, and it’s just not possible.” He says that he’s even heard of couples who lived in Kelowna having their whole lives to move elsewhere when they retire because they can’t afford to stay.
Macauley, who attended UBCO after graduating high school, notes that the waiting list back then for on-campus housing was 1,000 or more students, and it is still at the same level.
He says if the university can plan a 46-storey housing tower as part of its proposed downtown Kelowna campus, it should be able to build more housing on the existing campus. He thinks the city should have demanded more from UBCO in the form of contributions to infrastructure, like the Parkinson Recreation Center and other amenities that will be stressed due to the increased student population.
“I’m not saying that there is only one solution to this. I think that the city needs to be a little more strategic about negotiating those relationships,” adds Macauley.
