Nipissing University partners with platform that helps students and seniors share housing
CBC
Students at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ont. now have a new option to share housing with seniors in the community.
An online platform called SpacesShared has partnered with the university to offer a new way for older adults to rent out rooms in their homes and for students to find those listings.
SpacesShared CEO and co-founder Rylan Kinnon, said the company has already partnered with multiple colleges and universities across Canada to offer students long-term living accommodations, of a month or more, with older adults.
Kinnon said both parties benefit from the arrangements.
"For the older adult, they get help around the house if they're looking for it. They get companionship and they get extra income," he said.
"The student gets a safe, affordable bedroom and they also get the opportunity, especially if they're new to the community or if they're an international student, their host can be a bit of a community guide for them."
To make the process more easy and safe, Kinnon said his team does criminal background checks when people sign up with the platform, and also has social workers on staff who follow up with the student and host to make sure the match has worked out.
Kinnon said there are an estimated five million empty bedrooms in Ontario.
"If we could get a twentieth of those empty bedrooms, you're talking about a million bedrooms, which is about the number of international students in Canada," he said.
Nipissing University president and vice-chancellor Kevin Wamsley said that like most communities in Canada, North Bay has faced a housing crisis in recent years.
Wamsley said about 29 per cent of its student body lives on campus, but that still leaves a "significant number off campus."
He added 52 per cent of North Bay residents are retired, which made SpacesShared a perfect option to explore.
"Because of the pandemic, some folks were a little hesitant about opening up their homes again and this really helps ease them back into those waters," Wamsley said.
He said the university has long built relationships with older adults in the community to open up their homes to students, but using a platform like SpacesShared makes it easier and more convenient.
Windsor-Essex, Chatham-Kent and Sarnia can all expect between 20 and 40 millimetres of rainfall this weekend.
More Alberta seniors are now eligible for a provincially funded RSV vaccine.
More than 100 workers at a steel plant in eastern Ontario are being laid off either temporarily or permanently, as a company with facilities in Quebec and Ontario cuts its workforce due to challenging market conditions — including U.S. tariffs.
A small town northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has become the unlikely home for hundreds of foreign workers, but many may have to leave the community they've embraced after the end of a federal program put in place to fill gaps in Canada's labour market.
There's mixed reaction in Waterloo to an injuction allowing police to detain, arrest and charge anyone who is participating in unsanctioned street parties in that city this weekend.
Diabetes Canada is excited about Prince Edward Island's new pharmacare deal with the federal government, but hopes the province will reevaluate copays on diabetes supplies, says a senior manager with the organization.
After 26 years of accommodating guests from across the world, Faith Embleton says she and her husband Ken are ready to sell their bed and breakfast.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.
A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.