> 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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:<p>> “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.<p>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.
> 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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
I went to UT Austin and for me the solution to this problem was:<p>- buy a cheap, 10-year old car<p>- live in a pretty decent apartment about 20 miles from campus<p>- get up at 4:30 AM, drive to campus before rush hour, and do my work in the library<p>- pack "hiking food" (trail mix, etc.) in my backpack and eat for real at night<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
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)
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 <i>what happened to rents in existing properties when the luxury towers sprouted up</i>. Because <i>of course</i> 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.<p>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 <i>dorms</i>, 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...
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.
Here's one of the companies Ann Arbor properties:<p><a href="https://www.americancampus.com/student-apartments/mi/ann-arbor" rel="nofollow">https://www.americancampus.com/student-apartments/mi/ann-arb...</a><p>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).
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.<p>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.<p>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?<p>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.<p>- <a href="http://www.rez-one.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/MG_6020.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.rez-one.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/MG_6020.jpg</a><p>- <a href="http://www.rez-one.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/MG_5991.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.rez-one.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/MG_5991.jpg</a><p>- <a href="https://uwaterloo.ca/housing/sites/ca.housing/files/uploads/images/uwp-8.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://uwaterloo.ca/housing/sites/ca.housing/files/uploads/...</a><p>- <a href="https://uwaterloo.ca/housing/sites/ca.housing/files/styles/image_gallery_standard/public/uploads/images/mkv-10.jpg?itok=bu-x3tXm" rel="nofollow">https://uwaterloo.ca/housing/sites/ca.housing/files/styles/i...</a><p>- <a href="https://uwaterloo.ca/housing/sites/ca.housing/files/styles/image_gallery_standard/public/uploads/images/clvs-8.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://uwaterloo.ca/housing/sites/ca.housing/files/styles/i...</a><p>- <a href="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/29eef9_c0378e178fda4f0b847b82c9aa296456~mv2_d_4032_3024_s_4_2.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://static.wixstatic.com/media/29eef9_c0378e178fda4f0b84...</a><p>0. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYVJbupG3Xg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYVJbupG3Xg</a>
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.
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:<p>Austin: <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS12420Q" rel="nofollow">https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS12420Q</a><p>San Francisco: <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS06075A" rel="nofollow">https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS06075A</a>