As someone with 30 years in the education sector and 10 years in the housing business, Toby Chu, GEC’s chairman and CEO, has heard all of the nightmares facing domestic and international students when they first come to study in Vancouver.
Craigslist scams galore; inhumane overcrowding; unscrupulous landlords and even spy cameras.
Global Education Communities (GEC) exists to counter all of those bad actors by providing reliable housing options to more than 4,000 students annually from across Canada and 75 countries who come to study in Metro Vancouver.
“Let’s say you’re a student from Japan, South Korea, the Middle East or Ontario, you’re going to have adaptation problems moving to a new city,” explains Chu. “It's a stressful experience where they often overpay for rent or face safety issues. We address all of that.”
GEC transforms brick-and-mortar real estate into a live business by offering essential rental housing for students studying in Metro Vancouver.
Currently, GEC operates eight apartment towers across Vancouver, with six others under development in Surrey and Richmond. GEC also owns the 121-year-old Sprott Shaw College and Sprott Shaw Language College, which enrol more than 10,000 students across 18 campuses in B.C. and Ontario.
GEC’s breadth of experience has seen the company supplying student housing to students from nearly 100 schools locally – UBC, SFU, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Emily Carr University, Langara College and Vancouver Film School, to name a few.
These partnerships allow a seamless transition to living abroad and are completely transparent. Students can get referrals from their post-secondary institution for a GEC property or learn more about the promise of stable living from GEC’s online platform, GECLiving.com or across YouTube, Facebook or Instagram.
And the housing need is vast, especially when considering the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation estimates Canada will need 3.5 million more housing units by 2030 to meet demand.
“We regularly get compliments from parents and students, but most importantly, from the schools, because we invite our partner schools and their housing directors to regularly visit us – their inspections ensure quality,” Chu says.
As for the suites themselves, picture them as hotel quality without hotel prices offered alongside easy-to-understand lease terms. All GEC properties are fully furnished with cooking utensils, bedding supplies, high security, weekly housekeeping, on-site caretakers, surveillance cameras in all public areas, utilities and high-speed internet. Students can move in and move out without the stress of settling into a new home.
GEC’s expansion plans include the development of a 51-storey Education Mega Centre (EMC) across from the Surrey Central SkyTrain Station. Slated to begin construction next year, EMC will accommodate nearly 1,100 students living within 100 metres of the SFU Surrey Campus, Kwantlen Polytechnic University (Surrey Central Campus) and the pending SFU Medical School. The list of amenities includes an electronic library, coffee bars, restaurants, gyms, meeting rooms, quiet lounges, video conferencing facilities and game rooms.
Upon completion, EMC will be the first off-campus education super centre in the world.
“At GEC we take care to ensure that the students have a good experience.” Chu says. “For the domestic students, it can be hard enough with a 0.9% vacancy rate in Vancouver, but for someone who is from 3,000 miles away it’s even more stressful.”
