Habitat-ers celebrate after participating in an icebreaker game.

Tashika Gomes

Student representatives from Habitat for Humanity occupied Gould St. today to protest the lack of affordable housing in Toronto. Students from Ryerson University, York University, George Brown College, and the University of Toronto have been camped out on Rye's campus since 7 a.m. (Photo gallery by Tashika Gomes. Video by Thea Gagliardi.)

From 7 a.m. Friday to 7 a.m. Saturday, post-secondary students lived, ate, slept, and fundraised on Gould St. The students, from various school chapters of Habitat for Humanity, stayed the 24 hours to raise awareness of how little affordable housing is available for low income families.

“It matters where you lay your head down at night,” said Curtis Hector, leader of the York University Habitat chapter. “It goes on to affect everything you do the next day when you wake up in the morning.”

But finding a safe, adequate place to lay one’s head in Toronto is a notoriously expensive venture, both for low income families and for the high income-burning students who pay on average over $6,700 tuition per year to attend Ryerson (average for permanent residents or Canadian citizens). Add wallet-emptying rents on top of that tuition, and the new independence of living alone can be a costly pursuit, and not one that everyone is willing to chase.

On-campus housing, available for a small selection of first-year students, is more expensive than the typical student apartment, with the included price of a mandatory meal plan. But in first year, many pay for the residence as much as they do for the experience of living on campus and meeting potential friends and roommates for the years ahead.

“There are a lot of resources and it’s a safe environment in the city, especially for students who don’t know Toronto,” said Valerie Bruce, communication and residence desk facilitator for Ryerson Housing.  “It’s a great way to learn about the different areas of the city and decide where you’d like to live afterwards.”

Craigslist and Kijiji are always potential places to look for apartment and housing listings, but sifting through can take a long time and not everything is as advertised. Students could be potentially scammed or misguided, especially if they’re coming from out of province or out of country.

Ryerson offers an off-campus housing site with a guideline to costs of living in Toronto and links to online listing sites. This year they’ve partnered with places4students.com, a comprehensive listing search site complete with photos and floor plans for many of the advertised residences. The staff at off-campus housing are also available Monday to Friday to help students navigate their options.

But as always, the best way to find out if an apartment or house is the right choice is to investigate it in person.

“If you find an apartment you’re interested in, you should check it out first during the day and then at night. An area of town can seem completely different after dark,” Bruce recommends.

Toronto real estate gone overboard provides a wealth of material – enough for an entire site or two. Themash.ca and FMLlistings.tumblr.com both provide humorous sendups of local listings for apartments and houses gone off the rails.

Still, these sites focus on buying properties, and since most students aren’t looking for permanent residence for now, the outlandish prices and properties are a little out of the current picture. But with prices so high, it can’t be too far from many students’ minds whether they’ll be able to purchase a home here at all or be renters forever.