Accommodation in Nanaimo
Report by Isabelle A.
A Guideline that will facilitate your search
Before you arrive in Nanaimo, you certainly will think about where you will be living for the upcoming weeks and months.
At the time of my acceptance at VIU, I had already contacted a woman who rented rooms in her homes to students. Unfortunately that didn’t help me much. Firstly, the e-mail traffic was very time-consuming and secondly she wanted me to transfer a deposit to her bank account -which I stupidly did- and in the end I have never seen anything- neither from the deposit nor the woman.
Therefore I recommend you, first of all, to reserve a bed in the Painted Turtle Hostel, if you exclude student housing on campus.
Here are three reasons why I didn’t apply for student housing on campus:
1. Obviously, the proximity to the university is unbeatable, but the location of the student housing is for shopping and such not very good. In my opinion, the University Village is quite expensive compared to other shopping malls.
2. To me, it was very important that I can be on my own at times and have a clean home, which is not always the case in the student housing. On the other hand, there are also advantages of student housing: you certainly won’t be alone and you will be living together with many different cultures, which can also be a great experience.
3. And finally, the decisive point for me: the costs. If you choose one of the cheaper rooms, you should know that you will be living in a really small room with minimal furnishings. When I saw one of the smaller rooms the first time my decision not to apply on student housing was definitely confirmed.
Back to the Hostel: The Painted Turtle Hostel is centrally located in downtown Nanaimo and is a very friendly place with a good price-performance ratio. They also have breakfast, but I would recommend taking it only for the first morning when you arrive. The Port Place Mall is just a five minute walk away and you literally can get everything there.
At the time of my arrival there were already a lot of other students in the hostel who were either looking for an apartment themselves or had to wait for the move-in date on campus.
In fact I met my future roommates in the Painted Turtle Hostel.
So, I stayed for one month at the house of a very nice Canadian family. The following months I stayed with my friends I met in the Hostel in our own shared apartment.
I have found both apartments on Craigslist Nanaimo (http://nanaimo.craigslist.ca/) under “shared rooms” or “housing” or on Kijiji Nanaimo (http://www.kijiji.ca/h-nanaimo/1700263). I would recommend calling the landlord and arranging an appointment to see the apartment. You should know before you see the room if there is a bus stop close to the potential flat as the public transport doesn’t operate as good as in Europe.
