Few Student Housing Options

Tuesday, 24 February 2015 at 05:30

The local Real Estate Board says there are few options for student housing should a University of Ottawa campus come to Woodstock

WOODSTOCK - Should the University of Ottawa be successful in bringing a satellite campus to Woodstock, student housing could be an issue.

President of the Woodstock Ingersoll and District Real Estate Board, William Cattle says there really isn't anything currently available that would fill that market locally.

Cattle says the challenge is with the fire code. "You run into a lot of issues with fire separation and the codes generally don't allow you to take a four bedroom house and turn it into four bedroom rentals for student housing. They are not very keen on that. I think it would be locally addressing local municipal bylaws and talking to proper authorities to get zoning for it because it becomes a zoning issue."

Cattle says the proposed campus could potentially have a big impact on the housing market locally. "I think the main thing -- and like I said, I haven't seen numbers -- is to see how many students they are anticipating. I personally haven't heard and I don't know anyone else that's really discussed it, the actual size of the satellite campus. We already have a satellite campus for Fanshawe College and that really hasn't increased any pent up demand for student housing."

Cattle says housing in the downtown core doesn't generally have a large vacancy rate and when a home does open up, it's already in high demand.

Manager of Building & Facilities for the City Craig Wallace explains to Heart FM news the procedure for a zone change.

"Let’s use the C5 zone which is located in the downtown core. The C5 zone permits residential uses such as an apartment building, a multiple use apartment building, converted dwelling houses, townhouses, stacked townhouses and street facing townhouses. As shown these residential uses are permitted and a developer/builder could develop a site with site plan approval and a building permit provided his proposal complies to all applicable codes and bylaws. Depending on the type of student housing proposed the specific design may fit into one of the above residential uses and if not would require a zone change to recognize the non-complying use in the specific zone. For example a student dormitory may not fit into the definition of the apartment building. A zone change approval comes from City Council."

Wallace says to date their office has had no major inquiries to construct student housing in the City.