The student union at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B., is demanding that landlords upgrade apartment buildings following a fire that destroyed a large downtown block on the weekend.

Union president Erica Hendry says high demand for housing means university students often rent substandard apartments.

No one was injured in Saturday's fire, but a large part of Sackville's downtown was destroyed.

Hendry says the burned building contained many student apartments, and had the fire happened a few weeks from now more lives would have been endangered.

There are no indications yet that the building did not meet fire safety requirements.

Still, Hendry wants the town to conduct more safety inspections of student housing and penalize landlords who violate fire safety codes.

Sackville councillor Virgil Hammock is on a committee examining the student housing problem. He says there aren't enough affordable apartments in the community, and desperate students move in wherever there's room. 

Often, he says, students crowd into apartments that are too small to accommodate them. "This issue has been a sore point for the entire seven years I've been on council," he said.

Hammock says the enforcement of safety rules won't be enough to convince landlords to clean up their buildings, because the rules are lax and need to be updated.

Fire officials don't know what ignited the fire, but say it began in the basement of the 150-year-old building.