Airline tickets cheaper than room to rent for Canadian student

The housing shortage is also high in some Canadian cities. It is so expensive to live in Vancouver that one student has come up with a cheaper solution: he lives 700 kilometres away and takes the plane.

A student room costs an average of 2,100 Canadian dollars a month in Vancouver, reports CTV News. That’s over 1,400 euros. Rents have risen sharply. No wonder students are looking for solutions.

For student Tim Chen, it turns out it is cheaper to live in Calgary, where he is from. He takes the plane twice a week to go to his education. That costs only 1,200 dollars a month, just over 800 euros.

Camper

Vancouver is the most expensive city in Canada. It’s very hard to find a room. CTV also shows a student who lives in a camper van because he has no other option.

Partly because of the overheated housing market, the Canadian government wants to admit fewer international students, as announced last month. The intake will go down by 35 per cent next year, and even more in some provinces.

In the Netherlands, too, the tight housing market is one of the reasons for political opposition to internationalisation in higher education. Rents have risen sharply, especially in Amsterdam: a room there costs an average of 948 euros a month.