During the 2024/2025 school year, UOSU has launched its first ever Student Exploratory Housing Caucus, which was composed of 4 students, 2 UOSU board members, and 2 of UOSU’s executive office staff. The caucus was created to collect data, validate the real challenges that students face with renting and fight back against the “broke student” stereotype. In the past year, UOSU’S SHEC has: 

• Led a large scale study and created a report on the state of student housing in Ottawa
• Created a list of Policy recommendations for relevant authorities, including the municipal, provincial and federal governments. 
• Conducted both quantitative and qualitative data, including: 
  
  • 600 respondents to survey 
  • Non-structured focus groups based on their answers to the open-ended qualitative questions in the survey 
• Created and distributed over 1500+ “Tenant Rights” brochures to further inform students on their rights. 
• Hosted a Housing Caucus Report Launch party that had over 100 attendees, including; non-profit housing groups, city counsellors, members of parliament, university administration, and other key stakeholders!
• Presented to City Council on our report findings