
If the Tuition Doesn’t Get You, the Cost of Student Housing Will - johnny313
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-13/if-the-tuition-doesn-t-get-you-the-cost-of-student-housing-will
======
cbanek
> From 2000 to 2017, Austin’s population climbed about 45%, according to the
> Census Bureau and the City of Austin, as demand for housing contributed to a
> 72% surge in average rents. West Campus median gross rents outpaced the city
> as a whole, rising more than 87% in the same period.

As someone who went to a good school in the middle of nowhere, where rent was
cheap and we were surrounded by farmland for 50 miles in every direction, I
wonder if that's not the more sustainable way to do it.

Like computer science, having a college in a town doesn't require a lot from
its location. It doesn't need to be near a river, oil or mineral deposits,
etc. People travel there all the time to simply be there.

Going to college in an already large city, many of which have housing
affordability problems already, seems to compound the issue. They aren't
making any more land for housing near UCLA.

While it can be nice to have lots of cultural and interesting things to do in
the town where you go to school, I'm not sure it's really required.

I wonder if this means that schools in smaller "college towns" will be more
appealing... although it seems like reputation is everything, and everyone
still wants to go to an expensive school thinking it will make a difference in
their life, as opposed to getting a similar education with less name
recognition, as shown by the article:

> “But I clicked ‘accept’ on my admission anyway,” she says, figuring that
> attending UT Austin’s lauded journalism school would lead to more internship
> opportunities and, ultimately, a job after she graduated.

Although maybe this is all just naive thinking. Perhaps this would just end up
with the system con-ing them somewhere else. We always find a reason and a way
to extract more money from students.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
For CS, internships, part time jobs, industrial speakers, everything, depends
on being in a hot area. If you are in a cornfield, then you have none of that,
even getting faculty can be challenging. The best schools for CS are in hot
tech areas for good reason.

~~~
harryh
\- UIUC is in the middle of nowhere.

\- CMU is in Pittsburgh which isn't really a tech hotbed.

\- University of Michigan is an Ann Arbor which is basically just a college
town.

\- University of Wisconsin is in Madison which isn't a hot area either.

All are great CS schools.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Pittsburg is a city.

U Wisc and U Mich aren't top schools.

~~~
xigency
They're better than Harvard? [0] I think top 20 would be considered top
schools.

[0] [https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-
sch...](https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-
schools/computer-science-rankings)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Harvard is not a top CS school either. Do you mean MIT?

------
buss
> But the dramatic rise in rents also coincides with national developers
> starting to eye the areas around public universities as a growth market.
> Real estate companies bulldoze aging buildings to put up the kinds of
> amenity-rich, luxury apartments that might appeal to upper-middle-class
> parents looking for a safe, comfortable place for their student to live but
> which students from lower-income families such as Martinez’s couldn’t
> possibly afford.

This fundamentally misunderstands how the market works. Consider the counter-
factual: had the developers not come in and redeveloped aging structures into
modern buildings, those old structures would be just as expensive as the new
ones due to a shortage. Yet another piece that demonizes people who actually
build homes while not considering what happens when we _dont_ build homes.
Just look at SF for what the reality of not building looks like.

~~~
DuskStar
Even more so when the new 10+ story luxury apartment complex replaces a
single-digit number of existing units, which I'm pretty sure was the case in
Ann Arbor. So yes, the new units are luxury units - but there's a lot more of
them than before.

------
woopwoop
I live in Austin. I find it completely baffling that the increase in rent is
blamed on dense development in the area west of campus, and not on population
growth coupled with the complete lack of any development at all in the area
north of campus. Seriously, there is an enormous golf course with tons of one
story, single family detached homes within walking distance of 1400$ a month
studio apartments. I don't think it's the apartments that are the problem, I
think it's the golf course.

Of course, all of these single family detached homes had signs telling you to
vote against the most recent proposed change in the city's land development
code.

~~~
word-reader
Just imagine how bad the rent would be (for everyone, student or no) if they
hadn’t built up West Campus. It is easily the densest neighborhood in Texas,
comparable to Queens in terms of population density. The student loan credit
supply definitely bumps up rents around any campus, but please.

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ARandomerDude
I went to UT Austin and for me the solution to this problem was:

\- buy a cheap, 10-year old car

\- live in a pretty decent apartment about 20 miles from campus

\- get up at 4:30 AM, drive to campus before rush hour, and do my work in the
library

\- pack "hiking food" (trail mix, etc.) in my backpack and eat for real at
night

It worked out well and my living space was much cheaper and nicer than what
was available near campus. Audiobooks for the commute were a plus.

------
tracer4201
My younger sibling is in college now in her senior year. She was living with
my other sibling, who just moved away after graduating from her residency
program.

My parents don’t have a lot and my younger sibling was going to take loans
this year for housing and food. I’m helping her out with that.

My own controversial thoughts are that higher education in this country is an
epic scam. I had degrees in CS and Finance. Aside from 2-3 main courses in
each program (algorithms, operating systems, and networks in CS, maybe linear
algebra, stat, and diff eq) nothing else prepared me at all for my career. So
many courses required to get a number of credits that were a waste of time in
hindsight.

Then didn’t help me become a better learner. They didn’t help me evolve past
my prejudices. All of that change happened in my career, and all my success
with learning skills while I was working. My degree programs may serve some
people, but they were too abstract.

My professors generally didn’t care. They existed to do research. Most courses
were taught by TAs. I remember in 2010 a finance professor going on about
Amazons business model and how it was a company doomed to failure. Most of
these educators never worked a day at a company outside of education.

~~~
xwdv
Why did you carry so much prejudice well into your career??

------
rovyko
Rent definitely affected my choice of school. With identical offers, I opted
for a smaller tech-oriented university over the University of Toronto, which
is either the top or one of the top schools in the country. I don't regret it,
because rent in Toronto was insane and it's only getting worse. I'd have to
commute 90 minutes to my parents' house with no time for a social life, and
I'm super lucky to know that I even had that option.

And now rents in the small town are growing. Subdivided houses are torn down
for luxury apartments, and with recent cuts to government loans, it might not
be affordable for some low-income students.

~~~
eigenvector
It sounds like you're describing Waterloo. And as a U of T grad I agree, for
many years it was a far more affordable option that was every bit as good
(arguably better) for engineering and CS. Sadly Waterloo is suffering from the
same insane housing cost inflation as the rest of Southern Ontario now.

~~~
rovyko
You got it. I was lucky to start when it was affordable. The residence fees
this year are completely insane. $1000/mo for a single dorm room and even more
for a room in a 3-4 bedroom apt. Off-campus housing isn't much better.

------
word-reader
To put this in perspective, the key “problem” example in this article is that
median rent in a safe, popular neighborhood with relatively new housing stock,
in one of the country’s fastest growing cities, is a whopping $916 a month.
(And you can still make it less than that if you live with a roommate in a
slightly older building)

------
DuskStar
I went to school at UofM during the described time period (Graduated in 2017,
they describe rent increases in 2010-2016) and the question I'd love to see
answered is _what happened to rents in existing properties when the luxury
towers sprouted up_. Because _of course_ the new luxury towers are more
expensive than an apartment from the 70s - but if the alternative supply
hasn't gone up in price or disappeared, it's a bit odd to complain.

And I paid less than $1000 for a 2br adjacent to north campus (split with a
roommate, so really $500) that was 5 a minute walk from some _dorms_ , 15
minutes to the campus itself - and that's if you ignored the (pretty frequent)
buses. Which makes me even more skeptical of the "no one can afford to live
there" narrative...

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Spooky23
Definitely a thing. In my midsized city, between new dorms at the state
university and new private luxury dorms, the old student ghetto neighborhoods
are declining further. Lots of abandoned buildings, as they don’t meet
standards for subsidized housing.

------
maxerickson
Here's one of the companies Ann Arbor properties:

[https://www.americancampus.com/student-apartments/mi/ann-
arb...](https://www.americancampus.com/student-apartments/mi/ann-arbor)

Their cheapest rates (~$1000...) are for double occupancy studio apartments
that are about 550 square feet. They are nicely furnished (at least, that's
what it says on the sticker, who knows how well the furnishing are kept up).

~~~
mgoblu3
As a UofM grad and still an Ann Arbor resident, Ann Arbor has significant
housing supply issues and a city council elected to effectively keep it that
way.

That said, there’s definitely more the university and others could do despite
the opposition, and it’s getting more attention. Even as a student splitting a
house with 6-8 other people, I was paying at least $800/month. Ann Arbor is
not the easiest place to be a commuter into, so students have very few
options.

~~~
maxerickson
The 5 bedroom I lived in, a few blocks north of central campus, is apparently
~$3100. I think I paid ~$450 for one of the smaller rooms. Certainly not much
more than that.

It's even been remodeled.

------
imagin8or
Take control of the means of accommodation

------
rovyko
I lived in university-run student residence and in student-oriented rentals.
The amount of wasted space was unbelievable considering everybody spent the
vast majority of their time on campus. We didn't need an 86sqft living room,
it just filled up with garbage. I couldn't find an apartment with just
bedrooms, a tiny kitchen and a bathroom.

What I really wanted was one of these tiny apartments [0]. Build a whole
apartment of these near campus, students only sleep at home anyway, and
sometimes not even that. My univeristy is building a new residence and it has
the same 3-5 bedrooms to a giant apartment with a living room.

I wonder what's the main barrier to building a lot of tiny single student
apartments. Is it the municipal regulations, are they not economical or did
research show that students actually want living rooms?

EDIT: Just look at the size of these living rooms. I've been in so many of
these apartments and they're almost always full of boxes and trash.

\- [http://www.rez-one.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2016/11/MG_6020.jpg](http://www.rez-one.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2016/11/MG_6020.jpg)

\- [http://www.rez-one.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2016/11/MG_5991.jpg](http://www.rez-one.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2016/11/MG_5991.jpg)

\-
[https://uwaterloo.ca/housing/sites/ca.housing/files/uploads/...](https://uwaterloo.ca/housing/sites/ca.housing/files/uploads/images/uwp-8.jpg)

\-
[https://uwaterloo.ca/housing/sites/ca.housing/files/styles/i...](https://uwaterloo.ca/housing/sites/ca.housing/files/styles/image_gallery_standard/public/uploads/images/mkv-10.jpg?itok=bu-x3tXm)

\-
[https://uwaterloo.ca/housing/sites/ca.housing/files/styles/i...](https://uwaterloo.ca/housing/sites/ca.housing/files/styles/image_gallery_standard/public/uploads/images/clvs-8.jpg)

\-
[https://static.wixstatic.com/media/29eef9_c0378e178fda4f0b84...](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/29eef9_c0378e178fda4f0b847b82c9aa296456~mv2_d_4032_3024_s_4_2.jpg)

0\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYVJbupG3Xg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYVJbupG3Xg)

~~~
lumost
Kitchens and bathrooms are expensive components to an apartment. Arranging the
living space so that those are shared significantly drives down the cost of
construction. dorm rooms with a shared floor wide bathroom probably achieve
the same space efficiency as a 5 bedroom shared apartment with a bathroom and
living room, with the added benefit that it will be easier to sell the
building as apartments in the future should the need arise.

~~~
rovyko
I wouldn't mind a shared bathroom or kitchen, but I don't understand the
massive living rooms. My guess is it makes the unit more marketable to higher
income students that in a lower volume can pay more in total for a given plot
of land.

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cryptozeus
During my undergrad I bunked with 5 other guys and the rent was $100 per
person. I think if you can manage for 1-2 years like this then you can
organize your life better once you have some money saved up.

~~~
CameronNemo
I spent $400 / month for a bed in a living room.

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H8crilA
Ugh I was always under the impression that Texas has lower real estate prices
than California due to more liberal building permits. But it is very bad in
both places in big cities:

Austin:
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS12420Q](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS12420Q)

San Francisco:
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS06075A](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS06075A)

~~~
nyolfen
austin is the california of texas

~~~
dredmorbius
What's Marfa?

~~~
big_chungus
Berkely

