Can Continuing Educaiton Students Live on Campus at Uvm
The University of Vermont and Middlebury College are celebrating major enrollment successes for the upcoming school year. The downside: All those students won't fit into on-campus housing.
UVM expects its largest freshman class ever, and Middlebury also reports more students than usual.
And, with Vermont in the middle of a housing crunch, finding accommodations for all those students won't be easy.
UVM is cagey about its enrollment numbers, saying it won't know for sure until classes start, but it expects to exceed its record, set in 2019, of 13,548 students.
Austin Morse knows UVM's housing issues well. On July 13, about six weeks before the fall semester will start, Morse received an email from the University of Vermont's residential life office, saying it couldn't provide a place for him to live.
"Rather than keeping you in limbo, we are sharing this information with you as early as possible in the spirit of transparency so that you may begin to plan accordingly," the email said.
That threw a big wrench into Morse's plans for the future. He's been attending the Community College of Vermont because he wanted to save money. In fact, his entire college experience has revolved around money. "My biggest goal was to not start off my post-college-graduation life with massive debt," he said.
But he did find a way to spend his senior year on the UVM campus. For three years, he has received federal Pell Grants awarded to students who show exceptional financial need. That qualified him for UVM's Catamount Commitment, a program that covers whatever tuition the Pell Grant doesn't. That left him responsible for room and board, a burden he handled by working through the school year and taking out loans.
Morse asked to live on campus for the 2021-22 academic year, and he says UVM assured him there would be no problem finding on-campus housing. Morse planned accordingly. He worked full-time through the summer, saving $8,000 for room and board — a number he based on expenses last fall. Still, he'd need a loan to help with the costs.
But it turned out his hard work didn't pay off quite the way he anticipated. He made a little too much money to qualify for the Pell Grant this year. "If I had taken two weeks off from work, we would have received it," he said. And that means he won't get any money through UVM's Catamount Commitment program.
Living off campus will cost him almost double what he expected to pay for on-campus housing. He's trying to arrange a loan through Student Financial Services, but that's not firm.
'Incredibly devastating'
"This is incredibly devastating to our [family's] general financial situation if we are unable to get a loan," Morse said. Both his parents work two jobs — his father is a carpenter on weekdays and manages the family restaurant on weekends. His mother works full-time at Stratton Mountain Resort and cleans half a dozen houses a week after she finishes for the day.
"My family is incredibly hardworking and I can't even count the amount of times my mother has said, 'We will work this out,' and we always have," he said. "If I have to work 20 or 30 hours a week to afford the $1,100 (monthly rent on an apartment) while taking 18 credits and being a part of an honor society, then that is what I will do."
Joel Seligman, chief communications officer for UVM, said on-campus housing is not guaranteed for juniors, seniors, and transfer students age 20 and older, and students are aware of that.
Luke Sheesley, a transfer student from the University of San Francisco, will enter UVM as a sophomore this fall. He thought since he's neither a junior nor a senior, he'd land on-campus housing. But, since he's 20 years old, he's on his own. Sheesley will pay $1,300 a month to live in a two-bedroom apartment this fall.
Sheesley's mother, Karen Patterson, is frustrated about her dealings with UVM. "They basically said, 'We don't have housing for you and good luck,'" Patterson said. "There was no way to leave a voicemail message, no one to talk to in person. You can send them an email, which we did, but no response."
Lots of other UVM students are now looking for housing somewhere in or near Burlington. A Facebook group, Burlington Vermont and Area Housing and Rentals, is flooded with UVM students who need housing. But housing is as scarce as hen's teeth.
The Burlington area has a historically low vacancy rate for housing — less than 1%, according to Brad Minor, principal at Allen, Brooks and Minor, a real estate firm that surveys the local vacancy rates twice a year.
Currently, UVM has 240 students on the waiting list for housing. Seligman said those students knew they weren't guaranteed a spot on campus. Some rooms might be freed up as some enrolled students never actually show up, but not enough for 240 students. Already, UVM is squeezing three students into some two-person rooms.
UVM's not planning to build more housing anytime soon, Seligman wrote in an email:
"We recently added 700 beds when Central Campus Residence Hall opened in 2017. There are no new UVM housing facilities under construction or in planning right now."
There's some space in five apartment complexes that have an affiliation with UVM, according to the website of Redstone Properties, which manages four of those properties, but it is unclear how many, and the management company did not respond to VTDigger's query.
Squeezed out in Middlebury
An hour south of Burlington, Middlebury College is dealing with its own campus housing crisis.
Sam Lipin arrived at Middlebury College in February 2020, just five weeks before the pandemic shut down the campus. He was looking forward to this fall, his first opportunity for a real college experience.
But over-enrollment and an unlucky housing lottery made him one of 179 students with no fall housing. after the July housing draw.
Middlebury College enrollment has swelled from the normal about 2,500 average to 2,880 this fall, but the college does not have enough on-campus beds for the extra 300-plus students.
Middlebury had more applicants than ever for the coming year, classes of 2025, and an unexpectedly high acceptance of offers of admission. Many students who took time off because of the pandemic are now returning, and fewer students are choosing to go abroad, according to Sarah Ray, the college's media relations director.
The college converted several administrative offices to on-campus housing, adding 140 beds for a total of 2,648, Ray said, but even with nearly 100 students living off campus, that's more than 100 beds short.
Lipin briefly explored the idea of renting a place in town, but quickly gave up.
"There's just nothing available," he said.
Adding students to an already-strapped housing market is making "an already difficult situation worse," said Elise Shanbacker, executive director of Addison County Community Trust, which works on affordable housing.
Applications for affordable housing set a record last year, and then increased markedly this year, Shanbacker said.
To relieve the pressure, the college has rented several hotel rooms at the Middlebury Marriott and also opened up its summer campus in Ripton that hosts the Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English to house 90 students, according to the school website. That irritated Middlebury students who signed up for the college's promise of a robust residential experience and campus community, according to Lipin.
"This situation denies hundreds of Middlebury students the chance for any semblance of a normal semester, even though the upperclassmen have already dealt heavily with the effects of the pandemic on typical college life," reads a "fair housing" petition created by an anonymous Middlebury student.
Opening the Ripton campus raised other concerns. For the last 10 years, the college has made a concerted effort to keep students on or near campus at night to reduce drunken driving, according to Middlebury Police Chief Thomas Hanley.
Now, students worry that the divided campus will result in a spike in incidents and accidents, according to junior Mira Irfan, who is also still without housing.
Bread Loaf is 10 miles from Middlebury via a twisty road with spotty cellphone service that often ices over in the winter. Middlebury says it will run a shuttle to Ripton multiple times each day and into the night on weekends.
Hanley said he's confident the school will strive to continue its great track record for safety, but "it only takes one [accident] to create a tragedy."
So far, only about two dozen students have elected to live at Bread Loaf, according to Ray, though the college is offering incentives, including half-price room and board, priority housing next year, and free outdoor training and guided expeditions, according to information posted on the website.
Middlebury will host another housing draw this month, and Irfan and Lipin are nervous but cautiously optimistic.
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Source: https://vtdigger.org/2021/08/08/historic-enrollment-leaves-uvm-and-middlebury-college-strapped-for-housing/
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