Category Archives: UBC Housing Action Plan

That was in an email from a colleague at one of UBC’s better departments. “Gents, In your capacities as …, and BoG-dude (AKA faculty representative on the Board of Governors), have a look at these two links. A no-brainer, if you ask … Continue reading →

One colleague wrote, “I think you will find many [such] stories among recent hires at UBC who left us due to the real estate woes, or candidates we wanted to attract who took a look at the housing prices and voted … Continue reading →

Providing faculty housing is partly how Stanford grew from nowhere in 1960 to elite in 1980. Columbia’s renaissance in the 1980′s as one of the top Ivy league institutions has been credited to opportunistic housing purchases around campus which allowed the … Continue reading →

The University of California has a home loan program designed to support the university’s mission by facilitating the recruitment and retention of faculty and senior managers at all UC campuses (See below for details). But the true story is that UC may have collected a cool billion dollars by selling its home … Continue reading →

The first leg of our fact-finding mission went through NYU and Columbia University. And what a treat it was to watch the eye-popping experience that my non-academic tour companions were going through. They simply had no idea of the level … Continue reading →

In the next five days, I and a few other UBC governors and senior staff will be visiting NYU, Columbia, Harvard, UCLA, UC-Irvine and Stanford. Just like UBC, these universities are located in areas where housing prices are prohibitive. And … Continue reading →

The British Columbia government has recently approved the amendments to the UBC Land Use Plan that were submitted by the Board of Governors. The plan calls, among other things, for a densification of the university land, in order to address … Continue reading →

Last week, both UBC and the University of Toronto announced major plans to increase student housing opportunities on their campuses. Two completely different approaches, both motivated by the same determination to “go even more global”, and by their respective government’s … Continue reading →

The students were the big winners at yesterday’s UBC Board of Governors meeting. Credits go to a disciplined, focused and resourceful UBC Administration that has come a long way, and to exceptional student representatives, notwithstanding the little help that both … Continue reading →

We continue to investigate the various models that universities, especially those located in prohibitively expensive real estate markets, adopt in using their own land to support family housing for their faculty and staff. Again, I am not describing the various … Continue reading →

One would normally distinguish between a Land Use Plan (LUP), which involves zoning issues, occupancy densities, building heights and green space, from the universities’ policy on what to do with the development that accompanies it.

On June 24th, the Government of B.C. passed a new legislation that will have a major impact on UBC’s Vancouver campus. Bill 20 transfers the responsibility for approving land use plans for the bulk of UBC’s Vancouver campus lands from … Continue reading →