Housing problems in Boston on the rise

By Anthony Savvides

News Correspondent

For students seeking to escape the restrictions of on-campus housing, off campus might soon no longer be an option.

With the US economy in recession, housing and rental costs have dropped in most cities across the nation, with Boston being an exception.  Over the course of the last decade, rental asking prices throughout Beantown have remained steadily high, hitting a peak of  $1,750 in 2008, according to the greater Boston housing report card, which is prepared by The Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern.

Boston is one of the largest centers of higher education in the country, and as a result, students make up a large part of the city’s population. While most universities require first-year students to live on campus, many students seek off-campus options after that which has led to increased tension between universities throughout the city and the surrounding neighborhoods. A public hearing will take place Nov. 30 at 3:30 p.m. at City Hall to address these concerns.

“The main concern here is the continually high rental costs,” said Chase Billingham, a research assistant in the Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern.  “It’s not so much an issue of pushing students out, but people bypassing the city.”

Sixty percent of full-time students enrolled in a university in Boston are living in off-campus housing, which amounts to about 60,000 students flooding the housing market each year, according to the housing report card. The Boston Foundation, a group that supports communities in the greater Boston’s area, one of the oldest and largest community foundations in the nation, predicts that an additional 45,000 students will be in the Boston area by 2018, only furthering the issues. One of the largest problems facing the city is retention of its young, college-aged residents after graduation.

“We’re not retaining students after graduation,” said City Council President Mike Ross, one of the elected officials behind the push for reforming the housing issues that face the city. “We’re not retaining young people as successfully as other cities across the nation,” such as Austin, Texas, Phoenix, Ariz., and Charlotte, N.C.

While the housing market is always booming from the high number of students coming to Boston, the communities may be losing their long-time residents and character. With the demand for off-campus housing at such a high level, the asking prices have remained steadily high, Bilingham said.

“A lot of students living are living off campus in housing that was normally available for families,” said Bilingham, who also highlighted the fact that higher education is one of the drivers of economic growth in Boston.  “The solution is not to curtail student enrollment.”

Ross said he hopes to hear the concerns of the communities at the hearing and work together with other public figures and community leaders to find one, although he is already working on new policy guidelines regarding off-campus housing.

While prices have remained steadily high and tensions have increased, according to the North End Waterfront newspaper website, students throughout Boston continue to migrate off-campus without thinking twice about it.

“A lot of people choose to live off campus because they want to take on more responsibilities, and to escape the on-campus restrictions,” said sophomore Holden Sparacino, who is studying sociology and currently lives on campus in Davenport Commons.

Earlier this year, the P.L.E.D.G.E was announced, an agreement for students living off campus to respect their neighbors in the Fenway, Roxbury, and Mission Hill areas, and students were obliged to agree to it.  The university also announced plans to make on-campus housing mandatory through the end of sophomore year for all students entering next fall.  Most recently, plans were revealed for a new dormitory to house 720 students, which will break ground this summer.

“Private developers are building more and more, on and off campus,” Ross said.  The three-party agreement reached by Northeastern, the city of Boston and the YMCA to allow Phoenix Properties to construct the newest dormitory is the first of its kind, Ross said.

“I think that we are well-positioned, and we’re going through positive but painful growing pains,” Ross said. “There are clearly problems, though, and a lot of these problems manifest themselves in the surrounding neighborhoods.”

While Northeastern mainly deals with Mission Hill, Fenway and Roxbury, communities throughout Boston are feeling the strain of the growing off-campus student population.

“I’ve always maintained that we don’t need to choose between being the greatest college town in America  and also being a great neighborhood,” Ross said.  “We can be both.”