UBC micro-apartments planned to address student housing crunch

They won't be bigger than the average parking stall, but UBC hopes micro-apartments will help solve its student-housing problem on campus.

The units would be 145 sq. ft. but feature a bathroom, kitchen, studyand sleeping space.

"You know for comparison, they would be similar to someone's bedroom at home you know plus or minus but around that size," said Andrew Parr, UBC'smanaging director of student housing and hospitality services.

The school hopesto build 43 micro-units as part of a pilot project in a new residence on campus called Gage South Student Residence that will have 630 beds and cost $70 million to build.

It would be located on top of a diesel bus loop near where the school's new aquatic centre is currently being constructed.

Gage South one of five buildings planned as part of an expansion of up to 3,000 beds for students by 2020 won't be completed until 2019, but a demonstration unit will be built this fall for students to explore, Parr said.

"For students to actually walk through and kind oftouch and feel and play with," he said. "Is this somewhere where you would want to live and, you know, is this somewhere you want to live for $650 to $670 dollars a month?"

Parr says the motivation for the project is affordability.

"Affordability is a very significant issue for many students," he said. "By nature of its size, it's less expensive to build and the rents that we'll charge will be about $300 to $400 less expensive than other units that are a bit bigger but independent living on campus right now."

Parr says the average rent on campus is $1000 per month, and there is a waiting list of more than 6,000 people.\

Finding housing as a student atUBC is challenging and the micro-unitscould work despite their restrictive size, said graduate student Michelle Spelay.

"It's cheap and affordable for students if you just want to go to school and then come home and do your homework."

Second-year political science student Vedrana Tomic isn't so sure.

"It's not worth it, because honestly it's just ridiculous that people would pay that much for less than 200 sq. ft."