Diamondback Online - The University of Maryland's Independent Daily Student Newspaper

Issue date: 4/6/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Seyed Jazayeri

With a flood of 639 rising seniors denied from dorms next year forced to seek housing in an already overcrowded local housing market, city officials say students shouldn't get their hopes up about finding housing anywhere nearby.

"There's a limit to how many thousands can be fit into the city," District 2 Councilman Bob Catlin said. "Obviously, students can live a lot of other places besides College Park. I'm sure they'll have to scramble to find a place."

The city is already operating at a minuscule 2.8 percent vacancy rate that is likely to shrink even more in coming days. Estimates based on data provided by University View, by far the largest housing provider outside of the university's approximately 8,000 beds,show that it is about 93 percent leased for next year. And Janet Firth, the landlord who manages more than half of the Knox Boxes, said in the past day alone, she received more than 50 e-mails from students seeking housing.

Phones have been ringing all day at the Towers at University Town Center, a Hyattsville apartment complex that houses students at several Washington area schools, Vice President for Leasing Tim Taylor said. While the Towers were 10 percent full at this time last year, they're now 50 percent booked, he said.

That means most displaced students will probably need to ship off to nearby towns such as Hyattsville, Riverdale and Greenbelt, all of which require commutes.

But the initial housing shock only foreshadows a looming crisis that has no clear solutions, Catlin said. The city has only 300 new beds coming when the University House apartments open next year, and no other student housing projects are anywhere close to being approved, let alone nearing construction.

After the Board of Regents, the University System of Maryland's governing body, rejected the university's proposal to add a new dorm last year, university President Dan Mote said the university has no plans to push for more housing.

District 2 Councilman Jack Perry said it should be up to the university to solve the housing crunch the city and university share.

"The University of Maryland needs the housing; we don't," he said. "This is the city of College Park, not the campus of the University of Maryland."

The city council has been criticized for opposing student housing projects through rent control and most recently through supporting a state bill that would tax developers for building outside a restricted area. But Catlin said the council has stood behind student housing since it pushed to allow apartments along Route 1 in 2002.

It's the developers who haven't been biting, he said.

Senior environmental science and policy major David Daddio, who runs the development blog Rethinkcollegepark.net, described the area as a developers' dream with high demand and an undeniable housing deficit. He said he hoped the crisis would set off an alarm to the area's student housing shortage, recently ignored by developers in favor of condominiums geared toward staff and faculty.

But even if the city signed off on a new student housing project tomorrow, Daddio said years of red tape lined with city and county regulations would prevent any new apartment buildings from alleviating the city's strapped vacancy rate for several years.

"Normally a developer seeing a vacancy rate like that would be all over it," he said. "When you go up Route 1, there are a lot of places there could be housing, but it take a lot of time."

As students push into other cities, Perry said he feared students might also spill into the city neighborhoods, possibly jeopardizing the university's already icy relationship with residents who view students as rowdy transients who guzzle resources without paying back taxes.

Meanwhile, Resident Life's announcement has been a windfall for local landlords, who said they've been excited to work with the university by setting asides spaces with the almost sure guarantee that they will be filled.

International Business professor Peter Morici added that the increased demand could drive up city rental rates. As displaced rising seniors scour the area for whatever housing they can find, the select housing available close to campus will become more valuable, he said.

"Frankly, Prince George's County is a big place, so 600 people is not a lot to absorb, but for the closer properties, there's going to be a price effect," he said.

Contact reporter Ben Slivnick at slivnickdbk@gmail.com.

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