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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?
I have to say, I agree with Gram on this one. I doubt that requiring sophomores to live on campus will have an appreciable effect on improving the neighborhood. If anything, rent may go down, but I doubt that quality will go up, because the rental market can tolerate those conditions there. In the campus area, there is a constant influx of new renters, so there low likelyhood that even if a property is substandard, that it will not be rented (if it is in a good location.)
And while I’m no apologist for slum landlords, there are some problems that no landlord can control– it is an effect of having large numbers of young people living and having parties together. It isn’t the landlord’s fault that there is a burning couch on the front lawn and empty beer cans strewn everywhere. The landlord didn’t break the front railing off the porch, or break the front window.
Combine 10′s of thousands of transient, relatively short term renters with the fact that a good portion aren’t actually the ones paying their rent…it’s only ever going to get so much better.
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.
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.
I get what you’re saying. You bring up a good point about south campus. On another related issue are you aware that WP has the highest concentration of section 8 housing in the city? If that area ever had an impediment to being a viable neighborhood it would be the disproportionate level of section 8. In contrast I suspect that north campus will react more positively to the decreased demand of student housing.
That, I agree with. I’d guess that the pockets of housing that tend to have nicer areas already will improve even more as a result, but that overall the effect will be minimal.
That, I agree with. I’d guess that the pockets of housing that tend to have nicer areas already will improve even more as a result, but that overall the effect will be minimal.
:?: So, erm, slumlords will still be slumlords and non-slumlords will still be non-slumlords?
Exactly! :D
That, I agree with. I’d guess that the pockets of housing that tend to have nicer areas already will improve even more as a result, but that overall the effect will be minimal.
:?: So, erm, slumlords will still be slumlords and non-slumlords will still be non-slumlords?
:lol:
I think they’ll just become more segregated…ie. the slumlords will divest of the properties in nicer areas and focus on the crappy ones exclusively.
Ignoring neighborhood improvement for the moment, a college has the responsibility to provide a quality education. If they fell it’s in their students’ best interest to require on campus living for x number of years, so be it. A student looking at prospective colleges has every right to evaluate based on living conditions. Or choose an option like CSCC to complete graduation requirements then transfer to a 4 year school. Or live at home until the university policy allows them to live off campus.
Ignoring neighborhood improvement for the moment, a college has the responsibility to provide a quality education. If they fell it’s in their students’ best interest to require on campus living for x number of years, so be it.
I’m not sure your first sentence leads into your second as neatly as it did in your head. By that logic, a university could do anything to its students and say it was in the interest of providing a quality education. “A college has the responsibility to provide a quality education. If they want to ________________, so be it.”
Ignoring neighborhood improvement for the moment, a college has the responsibility to provide a quality education. If they fell it’s in their students’ best interest to require on campus living for x number of years, so be it.
I’m not sure your first sentence leads into your second as neatly as it did in your head. By that logic, a university could do anything to its students and say it was in the interest of providing a quality education. “A college has the responsibility to provide a quality education. If they want to ________________, so be it.”
I was referring to why OSU is considering this. It’s not to improve the neighborhood, it’s to improve education based on studies that, in their opinion, show it to be better for a student to remain on campus past the typical freshman year.
Yes, you can say by that logic that universities can do anything, but isn’t that to the extreme? By your logic, that of legal adulthood, should I be allowed to have alcohol in my dorm if I am over the legal drinking age? Universities already have very common restrictions and policies that they hope will create a better environment. My first year, the school I attended set curfews for the members of the opposite sex to be in the dorms. My point was simply that the universities have every right to set policy, just as a prospective student can choose a school in relation to these policies.
Ignoring neighborhood improvement for the moment, a college has the responsibility to provide a quality education. If they fell it’s in their students’ best interest to require on campus living for x number of years, so be it.
I’m not sure your first sentence leads into your second as neatly as it did in your head. By that logic, a university could do anything to its students and say it was in the interest of providing a quality education. “A college has the responsibility to provide a quality education. If they want to ________________, so be it.”
I was referring to why OSU is considering this. It’s not to improve the neighborhood, it’s to improve education based on studies that, in their opinion, show it to be better for a student to remain on campus past the typical freshman year.
1. My quote referenced folks discussion of the possible effect this might have on the neighborhood. That is the part of the discussion that my comment was targeting.
2. Regarding the improvement in education, if there is a real scientific study showing the benefits, then that is one thing. But students often self-select… students in honors housing may find the atmosphere beneficial whereas students that like to party may prefer off-campus living. If the university enacts policies that deter students from coming to Ohio State, as per your logic, it doesn’t actually mean that there has been any actual improvement in education at Ohio State; only that a percentage of the worst students have not attended at all. I’m not sure that’s a benefit.
Sorry your comment came right after one of Gram’s, which I thought you were referencing.
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.
Those buildings are nearly all section 8 housing owned by Ohio Capital Corporation for Housing. If/when the legislative fix occurs (allowing OCCH to sell the buildings) it is likely OSU will purchase them for demolition.
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.
Those buildings are nearly all section 8 housing owned by Ohio Capital Corporation for Housing. If/when the legislative fix occurs (allowing OCCH to sell the buildings) it is likely OSU will purchase them for demolition.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d consider that an addition by deletion. However, for the moment, they’re still there … and it’s highly unlikely that landlords (particularly those who already specialize in low-rent housing) are going to be sinking substantial renovation dollars into properties just down the street from those. Even if the student apartments aren’t Section 8 themselves, they’re very near them–and if there’s suddenly a shortage of student tenants, it wouldn’t be unthinkable for some of the existing properties’ owners’ to start taking Section 8 vouchers themselves.
Um … you were …
Sure, and OSU still had an all-female dorm on campus when I graduated, though I heard rumors that that was about to fall by the wayside. Fraternities and sororities do this with their own private property as well, and many of their social regulations are far stricter than anything dorm residents face. There’s nothing wrong with having that option. We’re not talking about increasing options here, though; we’re talking about decreasing them, i.e., issuing mandates.
That they have the power to set policy, maybe. “Right” implies something a little bit more than that to me.
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 agree with this, but are they planning on phasing this in? Won’t current freshmen be required to live in dorms next year without knowing this would be the policy when they applied?
I also agree with whoever commented on self-selection. Students who want to live in the dorms their second year are generally (in my opinion) better students, and have more money/their parents have more money. It’s cheaper to live in a crappy house you share with 4 people, and if you don’t highly value quiet conditions, then it’s the way to go.
My comment on bad landlords was a generalization, as my bf and a couple of my best friends lived in a house owned by the friends’ parents. Obviously they didn’t have landlord problems. There are some good landlords, they are just few and far between.
I agree the school has the right to require whatever living situations they want, as long as they are letting students know that at the outset, not changing it once they have their money.
That’s one concern, for sure, as to how it will be implemented. I think that with the amount of publicity this is getting and the available information, no one should be shocked. I would like to believe that OSU will announce well in advance.
Gram, maybe OSU allowed alcohol when you were there. When I was at Ashland my first year, no alcohol regardless of legal age.
I would venture to say that college age adults (typically 18-22) sit in a limbo between full adulthood and being in a sort of extension of high school. As a broad generalization, this age group typically still rely heavily on family as a support structure, are still learning how to live out of the nest, are taking on new responsibilities and learning new life skills. That’s why I don’t think the “18+, legal adult = free choice” argument really applies to campus living. Keep in mind a number of schools make exceptions to any mandatory residency for married students and military veterans.
I really think it should be optional not required. Sure it is to be expected for the freshman year but after that it should be choice if you want to pay more for less space and freedom.
lets say you have 2 people renting a house for 700 bucks a month that’s only 350 bucks per person.
Room and board
Columbus campus
$8,073 that is 672.00 per month .
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.
Those buildings are nearly all section 8 housing owned by Ohio Capital Corporation for Housing. If/when the legislative fix occurs (allowing OCCH to sell the buildings) it is likely OSU will purchase them for demolition.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d consider that an addition by deletion. However, for the moment, they’re still there … and it’s highly unlikely that landlords (particularly those who already specialize in low-rent housing) are going to be sinking substantial renovation dollars into properties just down the street from those. Even if the student apartments aren’t Section 8 themselves, they’re very near them–and if there’s suddenly a shortage of student tenants, it wouldn’t be unthinkable for some of the existing properties’ owners’ to start taking Section 8 vouchers themselves.
Um … you were …
Sure, and OSU still had an all-female dorm on campus when I graduated, though I heard rumors that that was about to fall by the wayside. Fraternities and sororities do this with their own private property as well, and many of their social regulations are far stricter than anything dorm residents face. There’s nothing wrong with having that option. We’re not talking about increasing options here, though; we’re talking about decreasing them, i.e., issuing mandates.
That they have the power to set policy, maybe. “Right” implies something a little bit more than that to me.
As I understand it from the recent Weinland Park meetings the section 8 housing on 11th is going to be vacated and the buildings are going to be torn down and redeveloped as part of the Coated Fabric redevelopment by Wagenbrenner. The section 8 legislation went through Congress in the spring courtesy of Rep. Pryce. The residents have a year to move after they get notice. The buildings might still be there now but change is already underway.
Gram, maybe OSU allowed alcohol when you were there. When I was at Ashland my first year, no alcohol regardless of legal age.
I would venture to say that college age adults (typically 18-22) sit in a limbo between full adulthood and being in a sort of extension of high school. As a broad generalization, this age group typically still rely heavily on family as a support structure, are still learning how to live out of the nest, are taking on new responsibilities and learning new life skills. That’s why I don’t think the “18+, legal adult = free choice” argument really applies to campus living. Keep in mind a number of schools make exceptions to any mandatory residency for married students and military veterans.
I can not think of anything that reeks more of an age bias and of condescension then to say that students don’t know what is best for them but university administrators do. That is essentially the argument being put forth. I’m 26 now and I’ve graduated, but I’m still offended that any person, OSU administrator or poster here, would attempt to say that they know what is best for other adults.
It is ridiculous to make a blanket assumption that 18 year olds aren’t ready to live on there own. They are “ready” to die in a war, vote, and star in porno, but they aren’t ready to live on their own?
Not to mention the cynical side motive here is that dorms are an opportunity for a university to suck even more money out of students and parents with overpriced, overcrowded, tiny rooms and rip-off meal plans. I never lived in the dorms at OSU because I felt like I would have had less autonomy and no privacy. And, for approx. the same price as a dorm room I had a one bedroom apartment in Victorian Village. Better housing in a better location. If I would have been required to live in them I would have transferred. It is a university’s place to educate students not restrict their liberties and make judgment calls about whether or not they are competent to take care of themselves.
I don’t know, my grades plummeted when I moved to off-campus housing! :lol: and i was like, 24 at the time :oops: