Students raise concerns over the condition of U of A residences

The University of Alberta is likely to increase the price of residence and meal plans for the upcoming 2026–27 year, subject to the approval of the Board of Governors. The university has proposed to increase residence rates by four per cent. Meal plans are likely to increase by five per cent. 

Students living in residence expressed frustration with these increases at a Students’ Council meeting. Many brought up maintenance concerns and a lacking accommodations.

Isabella King is one of the students who is frustrated with the state of residence. She’s a first-year student at the U of A currently living in International House (I-House). She’s also Inuit and First Nations. 

She decided to live in residence because she doesn’t have any family in Edmonton and living off-campus on her own wasn’t affordable. Living on-campus also offered the convenience of being close to her classes and student services. 

She chose I-House specifically because she wanted to meet new people from all around the world. And she felt it was important to have Indigenous representation in I-House too. King has found the community aspect to be great, but the building itself is another story.

“There’s been some issues with it, for sure. The kitchens and bathrooms and all that other stuff is not in the greatest shape right now,” she said. 

Broken elevators, appliances, leaks, and concerns of mold

There’s consistent issues with the elevator, leaks, heating and cooling, and the appliances in the shared kitchens. 

King said that fridges and freezers have broken down — in some cases leading to students losing hundreds of dollars of food. 

She was lucky enough that she didn’t lose food in those cases, but she said it would have been detrimental to her if she had. She has multiple allergies so she has to buy certain foods to avoid a reaction.

“A lot of the stoves are broken down as well, so the stovetops don’t work, so there’s only one oven you can use at a time,” she explained.

She said there’s about 30 people per kitchen. “If 30 people are using one oven, that’s really not sustainable.”

“There’s been multiple maintenance requests that have been filed over and over, and then a lot of them aren’t getting filled, or when they do get filled, they break down again,” she said.

Another concern is the old and outdated carpets. She said they have a lot of stains or signs of water damage on them, and as someone with asthma, it really impacts her quality of life. She and others are concerned that with chronic leaks, there might be mold in the carpets too. 

“It impacts our quality of life, especially because we’re students. We’re already not getting enough sleep, we’re already not eating enough, we’re worried about so many different things,” she said. “I’m a sponsor student as well, so I have to worry about maintaining a certain GPA and then I have to worry about if my band is able to pay for my housing.”

“I want to live in I-House. I like the accessibility of having my own bathroom, the privacy of that, and being able to have such a nice community … but it’s kind of inaccessible, almost. It’s not the greatest living situation.”

Slow response to maintenance requests

Paige Wall is a student in kinesiology, and is the president of the East Campus Students’ Association (ECSA). ECSA represents all residents living in residences east of HUB Mall. 

She said that personally, she’s been pretty lucky with her experience living in residence. However, through her role with ECSA, she’s heard a lot of concerns similar to King’s. 

Wall said that oftentimes if a student puts in a maintenance request for something that can’t be fixed in five minutes, it gets swept under the rug.

There’s other issues with the varying accommodations in different residences. Some have issues with heating and lack air conditioning. Others, like Aspen or Maple, only have one washing machine for roughly 40 residents. 

Wall has also heard concerns from students about black mold.

“The university has said they would look into it, and I don’t believe anything at all has changed,” she said. 

She said that in Aspen and Maple, there have been concerns over a lack of lighting in the common spaces. Students have tried to take things into their own hands, but felt there was little support.

“ECSA has tried to address this through the Residence Improvement Fund, which the university provides for student-led projects,” Wall explained. “However, while funding was approved for lamps in 98 rooms, ECSA has been asked to coordinate delivery and installation ourselves rather than having Residence Services manage it directly.”

She said this created more work for student volunteers for an issue they felt Residence Services should have addressed as standard maintenance or improvement responsibilities. 

Frustrations with rent rationalization

King also expressed frustration with the rent rationalization. The U of A changed how it charges for residence to be based on the room type rather than multiple factors, like the building, floor, and room type. Residence Services simplified 60 different rates into five.

“I think it’s ridiculous because we’re not getting the same experiences [in I-House] as people living in Peter Lougheed or Nîpisîy,” King said. “We’re getting all these rundown appliances and our bathrooms are constantly flooding, they’re leaking … our building is breaking down.”

Wall also said she thinks that Residence Services needs to review the rent rationalization. 

“When you come into something seeing the price rise, you kind of expect the quality to rise as well, or at least remain the same,” Wall explained. “But it seems to be declining when the price goes up or remains the same.”

She said that many students feel that the price is increasing a lot faster than they are seeing improvements to the residences. 

“Overall, students want clearer communication about maintenance timelines and more proactive upgrades to residence spaces,” Wall said.

Residence Services evaluating its processes 

Katherine Huising, associate vice-president, said that Residence Services is evaluating the orders that students submit and the timelines around responses. 

“This is a regular thing that we do. We are doing it again because of some of what we heard in the open letter,” Huising explained. “We will assess if we need to make adjustments in our approach.”

The U of A Students’ Union, along with the Augustana Students’ Association, ECSA, I-House association, L’Association des résidents de la Faculté Saint-Jean, and the Lister Hall Students’ Association signed an open letter outlining some of the concerns students raised at Students’ Council.

The letter also included a call for Residence Services to review the outcomes of rent rationalization and commit to the recommendation of the Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Task Force.

In regards to concerns of mold, Huising said they take any water damage extremely seriously. In cases that could potentially lead to mold, Residence Services brings in an external company to prevent mold.

She added that Residence Services regularly checks for mold during their quality assurance process, largely conducted over the summer. 

Huising also said that Residence Services has a “really excellent deferred maintenance plan” which looks at addressing larger projects, such as addressing plumbing issues.

“When it comes to elevators, we are working on a plan to modernize all of the elevators beyond a certain age,” she explained.

For students who only live in residence for their first year, they may not see these more long-term improvements, Huising said. 

But the costs are a challenge as Residence Services is a self-sustaining service, meaning it does not get funding from the university or the province. Huising also said that Residence Services doesn’t qualify for federal grants or provincial funding as seen with other university projects like the Butterdome.