One thing that not just Northeastern University students, but all residents of Boston can agree on is that the cost of housing in this city is entirely too high. I never really noticed it until I moved into my apartment at the beginning of the semester.

 At the end of freshman year, I had to start thinking about housing and where I wanted to live for the upcoming school year. I knew I wanted to live on campus because it was so much more convenient than all other options. After narrowing my housing options down, it was between the over-priced West Village, or the apartments on St. Stephen Street. I currently enjoy the use of my arms and legs, so I wasn’t going to sell them in order to live in West Village. I chose a quaint, leased property apartment and went on my merry way.

 The apartment that I had on St.  Stephen Street was very spacious: it had a living room, bedroom, kitchen and a bathroom, the essentials for any living space. My roommate at the time and I decided to turn the living room into a bedroom, so we both had our own room for the year, which was really nice. The price of this apartment was a little over $4,000 a semester for each of us, so at the end of the academic year, we had paid over $16,000 for this apartment. That did not bother me until this current academic year started and I moved into the same apartment building, but a different apartment.

 Let me paint a picture for you. You put your key into the lock and unlock the front door, and as you open the door, it hits the table that is right behind it, so you have to squeeze yourself and your belongings into the apartment. (By the way, this table does nothing for the apartment, since the kitchen is a size of closet. It just takes up even more of the little space that there is.) Once you’ve forcefully entered the apartment, there are three doors. Behind door number one is the bathroom, a bathroom that is no bigger than the table that my physics professor last year had in his classroom. It’s a tight fit, but you’ll make do. Door number two is home to the walk-in closet that was designed for one person, but is going to have to be shared by two. Behind the final door, lucky number three, is the bedroom. When you walk into the bedroom, actually the whole apartment, you can tell that the person who designed the apartment was under the impression that there would only be one occupant. In this bedroom, there is two of everything but still not enough space for one person.

 My problem with this is that this apartment is clearly meant for only one person, but somehow, Northeastern has decided that this space can, and should, be occupied by two people. Having spoken to a realtor who has listings in this building and around this area, when I asked how much the rent is for a one bedroom studio apartment in the area, she said around $1,600, but my roommate and I are both paying a little over $4,000 for four months, which translates to over $16,000+ for the whole academic year.

I love Northeastern and I’m so happy that I am able to attend such a great university, but their housing prices need to be reevaluated. And I know that I‘m not the only one who feels this way.

Grace Gpando is a junior chemistry major at NU.

Photo courtesy Creative Commons.