Montreal students are cramming into small apartments to save money: study

A study of student tenants living in Montreal shows that the sharp rise in rents in recent years has stimulated a new phenomenon: students sharing very small apartments.

The study, published on Wednesday by the Unité de travail pour l'implantation de logement étudiant (UTILE), shows that 10 per cent of student tenants say that three or more of them share a closed one-bedroom flat.

Previous UTILE surveys have already demonstrated the tendency for students to group together in large accommodations in order to cut costs, but this new data seems to point to a new cost-cutting strategy.

The survey, which involved 4,732 respondents to a questionnaire, revealed that in addition to having seen their rent rise by 20 per cent in two years, almost 50 per cent of the 171,200 student tenants in Montreal have an annual income of less than $20,000.

Laurent Levesque, co-founder and director general of UTILE, points out that in addition to the rapid increase in student rents in Montreal, there is also a shortage of accommodation for them, and that similar observations have been made in other regions, notably the Eastern Townships and the Outaouais.

UTILE adds that the deterioration of the situation in Montreal does not only concern students in the metropolitan area, since some 30,000 university students from all other regions of Quebec choose to pursue their studies in Montreal every year.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Aug. 16, 2023.