Campus and Community Planning propose new faculty staff rental building in Wesbrook Place

A new on-campus faculty and staff residential building is in the works.

According to a posting on the UBC Campus and Community Planning website, “a development permit application has been received for a faculty and staff residential rental building” on Lot BCR9 in Wesbrook Place.

Chris Fay, senior manager of strategic policy for campus and community planning, said that the project has been in progress since April 2020.

This proposal falls under UBC’s Housing Action Plan which “aims to ensure that 30 per cent of housing on the UBC campus is rental,” with 20 per cent reserved for faculty and staff. Faculty have expressed concerns about housing affordability in the past.

• Students aren’t the only ones struggling with housing affordability as faculty members feel unheard

“Faculty [and] staff rental housing is a really important recruitment and retention tool for UBC … because of the challenges of housing affordability in Vancouver,” said Fay.

The units would rent at a 25 per cent discount to market rents, like all of UBC’s other faculty and staff rental units, said Fay. It would add to the 800 or so faculty/staff specific units on campus.

“We like providing faculty/staff housing on the campus because there’s a whole bunch of benefits,” Fay said. “It saves commuting time, makes people feel like they’re part of the community, and so we’re trying to increase our faculty/staff rental opportunities on the campus.”

The units will consist of studios and units varying from single to 4-bedrooms, according to the proposal’s Application Booklet linked in the original posting.

Initially, the Wesbrook Place Neighborhood Plan had designated Lot BCR9 as a site for townhomes and two-tower buildings, but Campus and Community Planning wanted to build a “6-story wood-frame rental building” on the lot. According to Fay, this type of building is “the most affordable.”

An amendment in April 2020 to the plan “changed four of the sites from townhomes and two-tower buildings to four-story and six-story buildings,” including Lot BCR9.

The COVID-19 pandemic shouldn’t have an impact on the timeline of the project, Fay said.

“[It] hasn’t slowed [the timeline] down at this time, but we’re definitely monitoring what the rental housing market is doing and what faculty and staff housing demand is doing in particular. We’ll adjust the development timelines if we need to.”

The project is scheduled to be reviewed at the virtual Development Permit Board meeting on October 14, 2020.

Share this article copied!