The President of the Kamloops Accommodation Association says he understands why Thompson Rivers University decided to offer bursaries to students living in hotels and motels along the Columbia Street West corridor in Kamloops.
While the offer to help students move out of the area came after several hotels in the area were deemed nuisance properties, Tyson Andrykew says most of the nine properties in that part of the city are not a problem.
“Our biggest concern was all nine of the properties were kind of getting painted with one brush when realistically it’s one or two properties, and they know who they are, and you know they kind of needed to clean up their act a little bit but that being said there’s still societal issues, there’s still transient non guest issues that are occurring,” he said on the NL Morning News.
“We are confident that safety’s improved but we understand that TRU’s got to look out for their own.”
Andrykew says while the area has been a problem, the number of students affected is relatively small.
“I think overall there’s some properties that certainly don’t deserve that negative attention. That being said, I discussed how many students there are currently at the property. There’s really only, looks like less than 20 as a whole, more that 15 but less than 20 between all nine properties,” he said.
“It’s not like there’s a ton of students there. TRU’s not breaking the bank on these bursary offerings and so if those students do desire to move, I’m sure they will be able to just because there’s not a lot of them and hopefully there are rental property available for them.”
Andrykew says students in Kamloops staying in hotels isn’t a new phenomenon.
“This is pretty common. I’d say every year between 20 and 40 students reside in hotels, whether it’s for a month or two or a semester. Just generally as a bridge until they can find more permanent accommodation,” he said.
The university is offering students between $400 and $750 to relocate depending on whether they choose to relocate on or off the TRU campus.
