International Students at the Intersection of Housing and Higher Education in Canada: a Scoping Review

About the project

The housing shortage is a pressing issue in Canadian politics. International students have been blamed for being one of the primary causes of this crisis, resulting in a cap on international student enrolment by the federal government in 2024. This framing merits closer inspection, because international students have contributed over $37.7 billion to the Canadian economy over the last decade. In a fiscally restrictive climate, international students have been one of the few reliable sources of revenue for Canadian higher education institutions (HEIs). In this context, we conducted a scoping review to examine the existing research at the intersection of international students, higher education and housing. The review focused on peer-reviewed articles published between 2014 and 2024, adhered to the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, and was informed by the Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines for conducting scoping reviews.

On June 10, 2025, we searched three databases—Web of Science (Clarivate), Scopus (Elsevier), and ERIC (Ebsco)—using predetermined search strategies. We defined inclusion and exclusion criteria using the Population, Concept, Context framework:

• Population: international students, foreign students, exchange students, overseas students
• Concept: immigration policy, postsecondary institution international student policy, housing policy, housing crisis 
• Context: all Canadian higher education institutions, trade and vocational schools, tertiary schools

We included peer-reviewed articles, published in English, and excluded blogs, magazine articles, books and book chapters. Of the 518 studies identified, seven met the inclusion criteria and were included in the final knowledge synthesis.

Key findings

Potentially interested parties

• Across the seven articles examined, six interested parties were identified: the federal government, provincial governments, municipal governments, HEIs, international students and landlords.
• Provincial governments have the broadest range of jurisdiction, because of residential tenancy acts, HEI funding, zoning laws, immigration and postsecondary student regulations.

Current governance concepts and practices

• No interested party has a clear policy on international student housing, resulting in fragmented responsibilities and policy gaps across federal, provincial, municipal, institutional and student levels.
• Federal studies on newcomer housing do not include international students, who are instead classified as temporary migrants, which obscures their role in the housing crisis.
• Provincially, asymmetrical federalism produces uneven implementation of federal immigration and education policies. At the same time, student housing remains largely absent from policy frameworks and weakly protected under residential tenancy rules.
• Canadian HEIs do not consider it within their mandate to provide housing for the student population. Current housing can only accommodate 3% of the total student population, which is in stark contrast to the 20 to 30% available in the United Kingdom and the United States.
• International students rely on personal networks and private rental arrangements that are not covered in provincial tenancy acts, increasing pressure on ethnic enclaves and exposing these students to exploitation and abuse.

International students’ experiences with housing

• International student status creates four key challenges in accessing housing: lack of credit history and local references, limited cultural capital and housing knowledge, reliance on temporary and costly accommodations, and heightened vulnerability due to gaps in tenancy protections.
• Discrimination against international students intersects with gender and ethnicity, with landlords often excluding applicants based on perceived foreignness or unfamiliar names.
• The affordability challenge is shaped by four factors: the rising cost of living; Guaranteed Investment Certificate requirements; ineligibility for student loans, scholarships and government assistance; and limits on weekly employment hours.
• International students face challenges due to fragmented housing information from HEIs and governments that is often inaccurate, outdated or poorly communicated.
• Other difficulties include limited housing stock, remote housing, inadequate housing conditions, shared accommodation and overcrowded housing.

Policy implications

Our scoping review demonstrates that international student housing precarity in Canada is not the result of market failure alone, but is structurally produced through fragmented governance across immigration, higher education and housing systems. The implications flow directly from this finding.

• Governance alignment: Establish coordinated federal, provincial, municipal, and higher education governance mechanisms to align immigration policy, enrolment decisions and housing responsibilities.
• Capacity-based enrolment: Link international student enrolment levels to verified housing and support service capacity, rather than relying on assumptions that the private market will absorb demand.
• Clear accountability: Clarify responsibility across governments and higher education institutions so housing precarity is addressed as a systemic governance failure rather than an individual student risk.
• Tenancy protection gaps: Extend provincial tenancy protections to informal, shared and subtenancy arrangements where international students are disproportionately represented.
• Institutional housing planning: Integrate housing planning into higher education recruitment practices, internationalization strategies and institutional planning and risk management frameworks.
• Evidence-based reform: Prioritize longitudinal, comparative and intersectional data collection to support coordinated reform across immigration, housing and higher education policy areas.

Contact the researchers

Hassan Bashir, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Public and Global Affairs, Carleton University: hassanbashir3@cunet.carleton.ca

Kashif Raza, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Faculty of Education, The University of British Columbia: kraza24@mail.ubc.ca

Further information

Read full report (Coming soon)