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The Dispatch wrote
Landlords hurt if sophomores stay in dorms
Friday, December 26, 2008
By Bill Bush
The University District would suffer from decay and lower property values if a proposal to force Ohio State University sophomores to live on campus is carried out, according to a $28,000 study commissioned by landlords who own thousands of apartments in the area.
The area’s apartment-occupancy rate — now a stunning 99.4 percent — could drop to less than 80 percent if there were enough space on campus to house the 3,000 sophomores now living in private housing, according to the study by VWB Research.
If fewer students rent, then market forces should put more pressure on landlords to clean up their acts. I almost fell over when I read the article, landlords claim this will add to decay…hahaha…could campus housing be any worse?
We’ve had the discussion here before.
Personally I think the area will be better for it. Rather than cranking out cheap, shoddy apartments (there are exceptions in the UD) landlords are going to have to reconsider their market. There could be a lot of potential for making the units nicer and going towards the grad students and young professionals looking for affordable housing.
Yep. I’m not going to shed too many tears for campus-area landlords. 80% occupancy (as a worst case scenario) is hardly the end of the world. A few small investments in their properties would do wonders in attracting non-sophomore residents to take their place.
Yeah no sympathy for them from me – at least based on the fact they’ve been making a killing off renting buildings that probably don’t meet code (generalizing of course). I think the area would benefit a lot from this change and I think the school would too – even if it sounds like a money making scheme by OSU to get an extra year of room/board, I think many would agree (and the studies generally concur) that students end up better off by sticking around that extra year in a dorm (in terms of grades, graduation, etc).
Maybe the places furthest from campus could shift towards being an owner-occupied non-student neighborhood. I think that would be good for the area.
Or maybe there would just be more students living in the University District instead of further away (Buckeye Village, Olentangy Commons, etc…). The 99.4% occupancy might indicate that there is some latent demand in the market.
Yeah, I wouldn’t shed a tear either for any of those landholders. They should be happy the students aren’t Zapatistas.
May I ask what the intent and purpose of requiring young adults (Freshmen or even sophmores) to reside on the school grounds besides the obvious?
Owner-occupied as majority? That doesn’t exist for a while’s distance from the university grounds. I remember reading in Columbus Monthly a year or two ago (Central Ohio’s Best Neighborhoods) that Victorian Village was only 22% owner-occupied despite a perceived notion assuming the opposite.
From here: http://media.www.thelantern.com/media/storage/paper333/news/2008/02/01/Campus/Osu-To.Invest.196.M.In.Dorm.Changes-3183319.shtml?reffeature=htmlemailedition
The rich history of slumlords on campus has always been an issue. When you have bars actually naming themselves “Not Al’s”, so you know that certain slumlords don’t own them…it’s pretty indicative of the size of the problem.
I wouldn’t trust that study, but I’d also question the people who think that forcing sophomores to live on campus would force the off-campus landlords to clean up their act. What chain of cause and effect are you seeing that leads from A to B?
I don’t trust the study because I’m betting that what will really happen is that the apartments that are currently let to students in the eastern reaches of the University District will be let to adults other than students again, i.e., the Near East Side will simply, in practice, move back closer to the university, whether that means to 4th or Summit or wherever. The apartments that are currently let to students closer to High will still be let to students, and will not be fixed up to any appreciable degree because making sophomores live on campus doesn’t say anything about the disposable income of students. That variable has gotten no attention on this thread so far. Some students pay their own way and some are on lifelines or allowances from their parents. However, the “before” and “after” blend of those resources is not going to be changed by making sophomores live on campus, and the current blend produces the current price level for off-campus housing.
Short version of all of the above: Most students will still want to live in cheap apartments; therefore, landlords are going to continue to provide cheap apartments.
Any landlord who tried to move up the scale with clear eyes would realize that they’re not trying to steal business from their local UD competitors; they’d be trying to attract students who would normally have lived farther from campus to get higher-quality (and higher-priced) places, such as some of the complexes north up Olentangy River Road. That might happen, since some of those students might like to live closer to campus if there were better options there, but it would have nothing to do with the proposed OSU policy change. All that policy will do is make the market composed of low-income juniors and seniors rather than low-income sophomores, juniors, and seniors. The low-income sophomores are far more likely to be replaced with low-income adults than any other demographic.
I don’t know if any “adult” who would willingly prefer to live on campus as it is now.
I can only speak from my optimistic perspective but an 80% percent occupancy should force some landlords to compete (investing in curb appeal) for the decreased level of demand by their target consumer (college students). 99.4% occupancy rate does not compel any landlord into making improvements to his cash cow.
I’m going to take the contrarian point of view and express my concern for the welfare of the landlords in the campus area.
Oh, wait. No, no I’m not. They can suck it.
Not on campus. In the apartments east of campus near the borders where the University District and Weinland Park and the Near East Side blend together. The rentals east of the University District aren’t of the highest quality themselves, after all, you know. Ditto Weinland Park, especially in its northern and eastern reaches.
Look at Chittenden, 11th Ave., etc. east of 4th St. Those aren’t owned by students, but they’re bordering on the student areas. In terms of quality, they’re not much different than the rentals currently taken by students as you move west toward campus. You may not know any adults who would prefer to live in that quality of housing stock to save money, but I assure you they exist. The areas vacated by students forced to live on campus would be much more likely to take on the characteristics of the neighborhood they immediately adjoin rather than the Short North.
Why would the landlords put more money into their properties with no prospect of getting more money out of them? This new OSU regulation won’t suddenly enable them to charge an extra $100/mo. per person in rent. (Very likely the opposite–the market would be forcibly shrunk.) That’s not exactly going to motivate people to shell out big bucks for renovations and upgrades.
No, but more available units with less competition for them will probably have some effect on the landlords doing something to better their places or do more to attract potential tenants.
There is also some chance for them to charge higher rents. Instead of having a 6 unit house, you convert it to a 3 unit. More space, more square footage might mean a higher rent.
Higher rent per person, maybe; not likely higher rent for the whole property. (If they could do that, they’d have done it already; it’s not like they feel a public service obligation to provide housing for as many people as possible.)
Owner-occupied as majority? That doesn’t exist for a while’s distance from the university grounds. I remember reading in Columbus Monthly a year or two ago (Central Ohio’s Best Neighborhoods) that Victorian Village was only 22% owner-occupied despite a perceived notion assuming the opposite.
Interesting stat. Maybe just a less transient population would be good for portions of the University District then.
I have no sympathy for the land lords either, especially given my experience renting as a grad student.
The UD has great potential (to be more than just campus slum housing) given its housing stock and proximity.
I think reducing occupancy down would make the area more amenable to attracting homebuyers and bring some stability to the neighborhood.
I think reducing occupancy down would make the area more amenable to attracting homebuyers and bring some stability to the neighborhood.
Agreed. I’m also going to take the optimistic approach, because I think it takes optimists to make good things to happen. The area is in bad shape right now primarily because of the transient population of immature college students who could care less about the neighborhood. Having fewer in the area could open the door for more of the people who are currently living in the Victorian Village area and the Short North who, although “transient” apartment-dwellers, probably care more about where they live and what it looks like.
Plus…IF a streetcar ever made it to the campus area along High Street
(Sorry to bring up the streetcar topic), I could see this area becoming MUCH more attractive, particularly to young professionals and others who would like to live without a car. It’s a walkable area, lots of density, lots of culture, lots to do…the slum lords would have to upgrade if they want to attract people who are willing to pay higher rents for these amenities.
I don’t think anyone will be giving a pro-landlord response here unless one of the landlords signs up themselves. I don’t know anyone who’s lived in the University District and NOT had some kind of problem (break-ins, neglected repairs, landlords who come in unannounced). From the point of view of sophomores, it sucks. Any student who is 18 or older should be allowed to live wherever they want. If their parents think otherwise, then their parents can make that decision. For the university to make that decision for them seems wrong.
I think it’s perfectly fine for a university to dictate where and how students live. We have schools that are 4 years mandatory in the dorms, so the 2 in comparison aren’t bad. Most schools make exceptions for married students and those returning following military service. Some also make exceptions for students commuting from home.
When you accept admission, you know going into it what the living conditions will be. I understand the 18+ mentality, but students straddle that fine line of being adults and still being grown up kids. If that makes sense.
I didn’t have any of those problems and actually liked my landlord a lot. But I still think there are plenty of slumlords out there. I’d like to see building codes enforced more strictly.
By comparison, perhaps, but this isn’t entirely a comparative exercise. I don’t think it’s “perfectly fine” for schools to dictate where students live even their first year. They may be able to make a legal case for it based on it being a condition of admission, accepted voluntarily, but a legal case and a moral case are two very different things. I don’t think they have any right or business telling anyone of age 18+ where to live or not live–particularly since the dormitories tend to be fairly expensive (and I say this as someone who lived in the dorms all four years). The university stands to make a considerable revenue for itself by compelling its students to stay on campus an extra year. The residence halls are self-financed, so I won’t say profit; ResLife won’t return money to the university general fund (at least, that’s my current understanding). However, they’re looking at a pretty sizable increase in their own footprint.
The only experience I had with an off-campus landlord at OSU was with Kohr Royer Griffith; I rented an apartment from them for one summer, when the dorms were closed (or, more accurately, full of high school wrestlers and cheerleaders). It was decidedly “meh.” It could have been worse, and I never needed any real maintenance while I was there, so I don’t know how they’d have handled that.
I fully support enforcing the building codes, or else scrapping code sections that no one is serious about enforcing anyway. (Laws there for purely PR and CYA purposes get under my skin.) It can still be pulling teeth to actually get a landlord to comply with a code enforcement injunction, but it’s got a lot better a chance of actually leading to repairs of the property than does OSU’s proposal.