With an aim to ease the strain on students seeking housing while also freeing up homes for others in Greater Victoria, the province on Wednesday (July 17) announced Camosun College will get its first student housing building. 

The 423-bed "state-of-the-art" facility is expected to open in the fall of 2027 after it rises from what officials called an underutilized section of parking lot at the college's Lansdowne campus. 

The B.C. government is putting just shy of $152 million toward the project, with the remaining $3 million coming from Camosun College. While speaking from the college's Lansdowne campus on Wednesday, officials called it the largest capital investment in Camosun's history. 

Oak Bay-Gordon Head MLA Murray Rankin said it's stressful for students to find housing while also working towards their studies. 

"The last thing they need is to be scrounging around the community trying to find a basement apartment somewhere in a community that's already desperately short of housing," he said. 

Combining Wednesday's announcement with the hundreds of new student beds opening at the University of Victoria in 2022, he touted the addition of 1,200 student beds for Greater Victoria post-secondary schools.

"Everybody knows about the housing crisis in Victoria, the fact that there are 1,206 beds that will be available to people who won't, therefore, have to find housing elsewhere in our community will obviously make a difference," Rankin said. 

The six-storey building will have single, studio and quad units. It will strive to be a sustainable structure by using mass timber and meeting Step 4 of the provincial energy code, meaning it will be a lower-emisison building. The province is also looking to make the student residence a LEED platinum building, meaning it will meet high standards in areas like energy use, waste systems, building materials and indoor air quality. 

The building will serve students from both Camosun campuses. Speakers on Wednesday said the Interurban site will also receive its own student housing in the future. The college will prioritize spots in the accessible building for Indigenous learners and former youth-in-care. 

Olivia Bult, a Camosun student who serves as women's director for the college's student society, said it's a major challenge for her and other students to find affordable housing as costs rise and vacancy rates stay low in Greater Victoria. Having seen students struggle to find housing and seeing the impact that stress can have on them, she said her group is appreciative of the announcement. 

"Today's announcement is an exciting first step and we would really like to see a similar announcement in the near future that will benefit students at Interurban," Bult said. 

With the provincial election just a few months away, the ruling NDP also used the announcement to take some political shots at opposition parties. Outgoing Victoria-Swan Lake MLA Rob Fleming said the government's move to abolish tuition fees for adult basic-education reversed a "wrongheaded" policy of their predecessors that was punishing people for trying to get better jobs.