College Expands Property, Costs Rise
by Gregory Walters

152 Woodland Street, a light-yellow house with wood floors and a painted-tile kitchen, is one of nine off-campus student housing facilities currently owned by Oberlin College. Hardly a minute’s walk from Wilder or the Science Center, the house turned out to be a hot sell for students hoping to move off campus next year, even at the rate of $360 dollars a month — a price that would later seem too good to be true.
“We knew it was a little expensive,” said Megan Lowery, a college junior who’d been on the wait list for the house since the beginning of this year. “But we thought it would be really convenient. And besides, it’s a beautiful house.”
But when Lowery and her would-be house mates returned to Oberlin after spring break to sign the lease, she learned that the price tag had jumped from $360 to $515 a month, a rise of 40 percent.
“We just couldn’t afford it anymore,” Lowery said. “It was too expensive. And there was absolutely no warning, no reason to think this would happen.”
Although the College eventually lowered the rent to $460 a month for those students who have not lived in College-owned off-campus housing before, and $400 for returnees, Lowery’s group decided to take their business elsewhere.
“We immediately started looking for another house,” she said. “Fortunately, we found one.”
But for Lowery, the issue is about more than houses and dollars. “I had to trust them,” she said. “And now I’ve lost my trust,”
“I think everyone was pretty upset,” said Rebecca Byard, a college junior who, along with 18 other students now living in Oberlin off-campus housing and planning to return next year, sent a letter of protest to the administration over the rate change. “We would have had to find other housing, most likely. It was pretty late for that kind of thing.”
The sudden price hike, Oberlin officials explain, is largely a reaction to the College’s present financial dire straights. But it’s also symptomatic of a broader change in Oberlin student housing policy.
Besides acquiring the Firelands apartment building as dorm space, the College will likely announce this Monday or Tuesday the purchase of up to seven new houses (mostly on Woodland Street and East and West Lorain) to be made available to rising juniors who have been waitlisted for off-campus housing.
It’s a revolution of sorts. As Kim LaFond, Associate Dean and Director of Residential Life and Services, explained, “It’s really a new system. As of next year, we’re moving full fledged into the apartment business.”
“The traditional residence halls, with communal bathrooms, that’s a bygone era,” LaFond added. “They’re still important, but we’d never build another one like that.”
Eventually, Oberlin plans to incorporate the College-owned off-campus housing into a lottery system, with juniors and seniors getting precedence, although there’s no word yet as to exactly how this will work.
As the College expands its housing options, fewer juniors will be granted off-campus status, LaFond said.
For now, there are no other concrete plans to purchase or build new housing. “The Board has talked about building a new housing facility, maybe seven to 10 years down the road. That would be apartment-style, too.”
LaFond also defended the rising price of the off-campus housing, arguing the expense is worth the value.
“I think the space in those apartments is large, larger than regular dorm singles. And the rent includes the cost of electricity, heat and trash pickup. In older homes, which all of these are, your utility costs are going to be high. Besides, someone’s gonna be there to scrape your sidewalk in the morning,” he said.
Even so, LaFond admits, the timing of the price change is “a valid concern.”
“These houses are a work in progress,” he said. “We’ve only had them two years. In February and March we started to evaluate our concerns for revenue due to the College’s financial woes and in considering the space in these apartments, we thought they should be equal to a super single. But that price was really too high, so we moved it back down.”
Junior Rebecca Byard, for the most part, approves. “For us, [the returning tenants], I think [the revised rate] is a good compromise,” she said. “I’m not thrilled, but it’s reasonable. If they have to change prices, then they have to change prices. But I still don’t think it’s fair
that the new tenants have to pay so much more than we do.”
There will likely be more price changes in the future, administration officials said, although it’s too early to tell by exactly how much. Traditionally, housing costs increase three or four percent a year. With the introduction of more College-owned off-campus housing as well as apartment-style single, double and efficiency rooms in the Firelands building, “We’ll probably be looking at a whole new pricing system,” LaFond said. “But, again, it’s too early to tell.”

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