Home Remedies

New England Journal of Higher Education, The, Winter 2005 by Adams, Liz

Colleges Look to Ease Housing Burdens

One area in which many New England colleges and universities impact their local economies is the housing market. In Massachusetts, where a survey by the policy think tank MassINC found lack of affordable housing to be the No. 1 quality of life problem, college; students-bankrolled by their parents and living off campus in large numbers-are often blamed for driving up rents. "Three or four students getting together to rent a Brighton triple-decker are going to outbid Joe Lunchbucket every time," says Tom Meagher, president of Northeast Apartment Advisors, a Boston-area consulting firm.

Expanding universities also buy up land to build new facilities, sometimes gobbling up housing in the process. In Northampton, Mass., Smith College is building a new science and engineering building on land occupied by 35 residential apartments. To offset the impact on tenants, Smith has created a Housing Replacement Fund to support construction of new units.

Smith's awareness of its impact in the housing market is hardly unique. Several New England colleges and universities are building dorms, refurbishing run-down homes, helping faculty buy homes, and otherwise working to ease the variety of housing woes that economists and others fear compromises the region's competitiveness.

In conjunction with major new developments in the Allston section of Boston, Harvard University promised to provide $20 million in low-interest loans to nonprofit groups that provide affordable housing in Boston and Cambridge. As part of its $200 million revitalization of a 15-square block section of Hartford, Trinity College and its partners have built or rehabbed about 30 houses, with 20 more in the pipeline.

In Hoiyoke, Mass., where the Latino population has increased by 170 percent, the University of Massachusetts Amherst has funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide a series of community financial education and sustainable home ownership workshops with support material in English and Spanish.

In New Haven, Conn., the Yale Homebuyer Program makes Yale employees eligible for up to $5,000 in closing bonuses and $2,000 a year for up to 10 years if they continue to own and live in their home in New Haven. Wheaton College offers land at discounted prices to faculty who want to build their own houses on it.

In Boston, a new remedy may be on the horizon. Local leaders have called on Hub colleges to ease pressure on local rents by taking responsibility for housing their students. In response, Boston colleges and universities added 10,511 dorm beds between 1990 and 1998, freeing an estimated 2,600 housing units for local residents, according to the Boston Redevelopment Authority. And since 1 998, Northeastern, Boston University, Wentworth, Boston College, Emmanuel, Mass College of Art and Suffolk have all provided at least 300 more beds each. But college towns like Boston face a Catch-22: students living in dorms draw heavily on city services such as fire and police but pay no local property taxes. Meagher, for one, envisions a hybrid in which colleges refer students to taxable housing built by private developers, on or off campus. That, he says, could be a boon for both colleges and their tax-strapped host cities.

Liz Adams served as NEBHE/CONNECTION intern during the fall of 2004. She is a senior at Boston College.