UVic Student Housing Development

The following is from Diana Gibson, MLA for Oak Bay Gordon Head:

510 Beds of New Student Housing Being Built at UVic!

Today at the University of Victoria I was honoured to announce that our BC NDP Government will be spending $121 million to build 510 more new beds of student housing at the University of Victoria, following up on the 780 we built that opened in 2023.

This project is about making education more accessible, more inclusive and more affordable for students and it’s a transformative step toward easing the housing pressures faced by upper-year undergraduate and graduate students. This project is also about making sure that more people can build great careers and thrive in this province. We’re transforming what is currently a parking lot into a thriving student community, that will have 90 four-bedroom apartment-style units for upper-year undergraduate students and a seven-story wing that will have 150 studio apartments for graduate students. It will also include a community kitchen, laundry area, and safe bike storage.

This project also has huge benefits for the surrounding neighbourhoods of Oak Bay, Gordon Head, and the Shelbourne corridor, particularly for renters in these areas. Making space for another 510 students to live in campus means 510 beds now being freed up in these neighbourhoods for other people to be renting, taking a big chunk of pressure off of the private rental market. 

Since 2018, our BC NDP government has committed $2 billion to build on-campus student housing and the results of this investment have clearly paid off. We already have 6,900 beds for students that have opened in this time, as of today another 4,250 are underway. Investing in more student housing is critical to our housing strategy, both for young people, and for the communities around institutions like UVic and Camosun. Just in Oak Bay-Gordon Head in this time we have built:

• 424 beds at the Camosun College Lansdowne Campus, the first student housing at the institution, with $151 million from the Provincial Government.
• 780 beds at UVic in the Sŋéqə ʔéʔləŋ (Sngequ House) and Čeqʷəŋín ʔéʔləŋ (Cheko’nien House) buildings that opened ahead of schedule in 2023, with $127 million from the Provincial Government.
• As well as providing funding for projects in our community like the affordable housing at Luther Court that broke ground earlier this year, that received $15.6 million from BC Housing.

PARTICIPATE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA’S COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT SURVEY

Information regarding the project and a link to the survey can be found at https://www.uvic.ca/campusplanning/current-projects/student-housing-expansion/index.php. The survey closes on October 13, 2025.

For further information on the project contact Campus Planning and Sustainability at planning@uvic.ca