Position paper, 17 pages

Queen’s new beds won’t ease Kingston’s rental crunch. They’ll feed it.

By A.J. Keilty, CCIM, President, KEILTY Realty Management. Published 2026-11-05.

Queen’s University’s new Housing Strategy promises more than 3,000 net-new beds and says they will ease pressure on Kingston’s rental market. We tested that claim against fifty years of Queen’s enrolment and every residence expansion since 2008. Our view: by 2041, more students are likely to need off-campus housing, not fewer. The full paper shows the arithmetic, the scenarios and what it means for each type of Kingston rental.

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From the report, page 8

Four scenarios to 2041

Net change in off-campus student beds at steady state, assuming all 3,000 new beds are built.

Scenario	Intake growth	Weight	Off-campus change
Brake, as in 1974 to the 1990s	0%	15%	−3,000
Restrained	1.0%	30%	+540
Central	1.5%	35%	+2,500
Fifty-year trend	2.0%	20%	+4,600
Probability-weighted			about +1,500

3,000+

Net-new beds the Queen’s strategy says full build-out could add.

750

Extra first-years by 2041 that would cancel out every one of those beds, about 0.9% growth a year.

1.9%

Annual growth in the Queen’s first-year class from 2015 to 2026.

80%

Our estimate of the chance that off-campus student demand is higher in 2041 than today.

What is in the report

Seventeen pages, with charts, tables and every source linked.

01

Fifty years of enrolment

How Queen’s grew from about 2,000 students in 1950 to 28,561 in 2025-26, and the one long pause leadership chose on purpose.

02

How new beds became bigger classes

The residence openings of 2008, 2015 and 2022, what happened to first-year intake each time, and why the residence guarantee worked as a cap until 2024.

03

The one-and-three rule

Why one new residence bed can take one renter out of the market or add three, and the simple formula that tells you which way the strategy tips.

04

Our forecast to 2041

Four weighted scenarios, the graduate student layer, a cross-check on total enrolment, and why delivery risk sits on the owners’ side.

05

Price: why upper-years leave

Residence, shared houses, purpose-built student housing and graduate units compared per month, and where new Queen’s units are likely to price.

06

What it means by property type

Exposure maps for shared houses, studios and one-bedrooms, purpose-built student housing and properties near the priority sites, plus the signals to watch each year.

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Queen’s Housing Strategy and the Kingston Rental Market

KEILTY position paper, 2026-11-05. PDF, 17 pages.

We never share your information. You will hear from A.J. Keilty once, by email, to ask whether the report answered your questions, and when we publish an update.

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