My family deals with homestays but only by referrals and most of our students are taking medical classes. We usually only have Thai students and we charge about $1000 to 1500/mo, which includes home cooked Thai meal and full utilites.. We have never had a problem with any of the students and they seem to like living with us since it feels like home to them since theres no language barrier... Meals are cooked by my Grandma, so there no problems cooking.. They get their own washroom and bedroom & access to my wifi with limited downloading. :troll: Either than that its been pretty easy..

Currently we have a high school homestay who just decided after their first year here that he will complete his HS in Canada.. Parents are doctors so we know their good for the money. Plus it widens our networking when going to Thailand..

sorry i'm speaking about the majority of the homestay kids in Vancouver and in Richmond...i'm sure there are many Persian kids in Burnaby homestays.

lol again man..majority of homestays me and other people i know have had arent asian.
Homestay program is multicultural
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My parents did the homestay thing for a while and it was a huge pain in the ass!

It really depends on who you get as your tenants. We've had people come from all over the world and sometimes that's a bad thing. We've had many cases where the tenants didn't get along with each other or where some students are really picky eaters. The odd time you get it just right and everyone gets along and has a great time with one another.

What you think is common courtesy, isn't necessarily seen that way from other people from other countries. When you live in a house with lots of people, bathrooms get a lot of traffic and hot water always runs out. Noise is a big issue too.

As for taxes, you'd claim it as rental income I think.

My friend's parents did homestay, sometimes you get some weird people. One time he got some crazy japanese dude who wrote suicidal poetry and things about killing people. One day he came home to witness 2 doctors and police officers escorting him out. Yea, it can be weird.

However, one time he got a hot korean girl which his bro obliterated with his cock. True story.

Depends on the time you have on your hands, i say just renting is easier then home stay.

of course it's multicultural...i'm just saying the majority based on the langara homestay program...which also oversees the homestay for VSB, richmond and burnaby.

The largest number of homestays are being organized through international student agencies, which generally don't get students to go to Universities, and which are much less-well-regulated and controlled.

There are a fuckton of horror stories that I get from my students. I'll not bore you, but suffice to say homestaying is not the picnic some people seem to think it is.

Yah definitely not picnic. Most of the time, the students are young and they're not taught by their parents many common courtesy. They're raised, you know, to be princes and princesses. When they don't understand something, instead of asking, they just do it their own way.

From my own experience:

I used to stayed in a homestay a few years back. The family is super nice and very tolerable. We had one Chinese weirdo whose personal hygiene is questionable as he has toilet paper all over the floor of his room. Another one is from Saudi who skip school, do drugs and won't get home until late at night. One time we had a police visit because apparently the guy called 911 "just for fun". And then there's a Vietnamese girl who use the washing machine 7 days a week.

And none of them wash their own dishes, and we have a dish washing machine. Let alone taking out the trashes...

Sounds like story time to me.

Let's get settled in neighbours, Mr. Rog... I mean Graeme is going to tell us such wonderful stories.

You guys really seem against all of this..

To the OP: Homestays do require 2-3 meals a day. Obviously when they go to school you can provide food for them to pack their own lunch. Yet breakfast and dinner are home cooked and that's what happened for my family.

We had an extra room w/ bathroom downstairs so we rented that out to homestay students for a LONG TIME (10+ years). It was actually VERY multicultural BUT you need to realize that you can search around and get VERY GOOD students. We NEVER accepted students in highschool, only college/university. We had students from Switzerland, Brazil, Korean, Japan, Hong Kong.

We mainly got the students from the English language schools downtown. ALL were very nice and respectful. Most did not call when they weren't coming home for dinner, so yes... lots of leftovers for dinners. But overall it's not a bad way to get some extra cash.

My in-laws had korean students for a few years, and they never really had a problem. My mother in law is a terrible cook, so I think the students eventually stopped eating at home altogether :p

i know $1000 is a lot more reasonable considering the living costs of vancouver. but if anyone pays $1500 they should expect to have free English tutoring, given rides to anywhere at anytime and daily back massages :lol

sounds like he was leaving all of his fap rags all over the floor

:troll:

There's a fuckton, but basically it boils down to people who are greedy and look to homestays as a way of making money.

One family owns two houses next to each other, both with 5-7 students at a time, all paying $750. The family had holes cut outside the bathroom to turn off the hot water after 5 minutes of the beginning of the water running for a shower. Laundry could be done once and only once per week (one load only), only with cold water, and students had to provide their own laundry detergent. Food depended on which house you were in, and the homestay family ate totally different food from the students.

Another time, a student was living at a place, decided to skip on the food and just rent out the place; was paying $700, rent dropped to $450 w/o food (nanaimo station, I think). Student was living in the larger of two bedrooms (not large by any means), and was told after 5 months of living there that if she wanted to stay in the room, she'd have to pay $550, or she could move to the smaller one. I informed her of her rights under the RTA, showed her where she could get more info, and told her that she should talk with the host. Fast forward to the next day, where I find out that my student got screamed at, and massively shat on, that the host didn't believe a teacher told her these things and that my student was trying to "screw her", and that if she wanted to do things like that, then she would have to charge my student retroactively for all the common property my student used: toilet paper, paper towels, dish soap, hydro, etc etc.

One homestay I'm familiar with did not give their homestay students keys, but set a curfew of either 10:30 or 11. If the students weren't home by then, the doors would be locked and the students would not be allowed home until the host family was awake in the morning.

As I mentioned before, several students have had issues with the food: cereal and milk for breakfast (no biggie), two pieces of bread with a single slice of sandwich meat and an apple for lunch, and extremely subpar food for dinner. Many of my students also report that students are variously:
-Not allowed in the kitchen (at all, or after a certain time)
-Not allowed to cook
-Not allowed to bring their own food into the house
-Not allowed to have the same food as the host family

and so on and so forth.


I'm not at all saying that all host families are like this. I've also had some wonderful stories, too. One of my students' families has a cabin just off Galiano, which he can use anytime it's not being used by the family or rented out. Another almost became part of her host family, as they helped her to get oriented and find jobs and volunteer opportunities here. Still more have taken their students on trips, kept in touch with former students, and given them uniquely Canadian experiences.

The largest difference between the two categories it seems, is those who turn to homestaying as a revenue generator, rather than as a cultural exchange mechanism. A friend of mine who stayed in Finland with a homestay managed to integrate amazingly well, despite the complexity of the Finnish culture and Language. It turns out there's a certain placement of the fork and knife when dining at home which says "I don't want any more food". If you don't orient them properly, your family will continue piling the food on regardless of how stuffed you claim to be. It's these kinds of things that you can't learn from books or classes or any way other than integration--which in my mind is the purpose of being a homestay host.

I wouldn't say I'm against it, exactly, but my issue is with the people who think it's just like doing your own thing and making extra money for it.

Can't say that's untrue, as long as you're ready for the work.

+1

A lot of people do it for the wrong reasons. We tried it and it just didn't work out. Of the students we housed throughout the 1.5 years, maybe only 3 of them were genuinely interested in learning. The others wanted to go party and what have you. One of them almost fell into the vice of prostitution and we had to bail her out. :\

WAAAAT?

That's some mama san story right there.

Yeah. That was a very ugly episode. We had to tell her parents and she had to go back to Brazil the next week. That's when we stopped doing homestay for good.

Edit: She wasn't even that hot. :lol

I can understand puttign some limitations on the washing machine. I've heard of stories of students just throwing their shoes into the dryer for 8+ hours instead of air drying. I can also understand not being able to cook. I also heard of stories of students trying to bake cookies...ON THE OVEN RACKS :facepalm: definiately dont want fire hazards like that.

but no hot water? not even more than 5 min in the shower? WTF that's probably worse than boot camp.

and segregating food between host and family is horrible.

Well they get their clothes washed. Garbage picked up and they do also get rides depending where they go to school...

And really $1500 isnt much if your going to get a good home with family that are willing to help you out. Plus our education system is way better than Thailand so most of the time parents are willing to pay for the better education. Its a win win for us.. We get really good Homestay students with good backgrounds.

Plus the networking we get is great.. I now know tonnes of doctors from heart surgeons to eye specialist.. We even had a 8yr old homestay from Thailand who's dad was a real estate agent in Thailand and my dad bought his beach house off him.. Now we are really good friends and they get us cheap hotels rates at 4 star hotels. So everytime I go to thailand. Hotels are easy to come by..

Whats to stop their dinner left overs from becoming next days pack lunch for them? They eat it one way or another :D

Are you allowed to talk or give a questionare to applicants or do they just assign you students?

The students always fill in a questionaire and the agency provide that info to the family. The family can decline I think. You can't really talk to them because most of them haven't arrived yet.

About the lunch, I think most of the time, good family don't want to piss off the students because then it creates a bad atmosphere in the family that you hardly want to deal with. They try to be nice up front but they do vent behind the door.