Nunavut Sivuniksavut’s next big step: a student residence

Nunavut Sivuniksavut students attending class last year at their facility on Rideau St. in Ottawa. The board of NS now wants to acquire their own student residence and, to that end, has launched a fund-raising campaign to raise $2 million. (NS PHOTO)

OTTAWA — The board that runs Nunavut Sivuniksavut is now ready for its next step: a permanent student residence in Ottawa to house the growing number of first-year students who study there each year.

“We’re hoping to bring everyone together in a big effort,” said Jesse Mike, the chair of the NS board of directors.

To get that effort started, NS hopes to raise $2 million from old friends and allies in Nunavut’s Inuit organizations, the governments of Nunavut and Canada and also, the private sector.

Mike, who attended NS herself in 2004-05, said NS now attracts about 40 first year students to Ottawa each year.

Right now, they live in a collection of apartments that NS leases annually from private landlords under standard 12-month leases.

The NS students, who usually share rooms in those apartments, pay rent for the eight-month period they spend in Ottawa attending the NS program.

NS covers rent for the four-month period when students do not occupy those units.

This arrangement means students collectively spend about $200,000 a year during each eight-month period and NS spends about $100,000 a year to subsidize those rents.

“All that money is going into the pockets of private landlords,” Mike said.

Right now, she said NS is looking at different options for creating its own residence.

One option might be the purchase of an existing apartment building in Sandy Hill, an Ottawa neighbourhood just east of downtown that’s popular with students.

Another possibility is that NS might build or acquire its own residence, Mike said.

She said some students do get their own places, but most students like to stay together and share the accommodations that NS leases for them.

Acquiring a residence would help the NS program build equity, Mike said. But beyond that financial advantage, an NS-owned residence could provide students, most of whom are on their own in the city for the first time in their lives, with more security and ease the concerns of their families.

Since the opening in 2011 of their school facility at 450 Rideau St., the 31-year-old NS program now accepts about 10 to 15 second year students annually, in addition to the larger group of first year students.

Second year students usually rent and pay for accommodations on their own, Mike said.