HOUSING HEADACHES T HE fr UST r ATIONS O f STUDENT HOUSING IN b OISE

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You are a high school senior that just got accepted into one of your top choice schools: Boise State University. Even though you are nervous about starting college away from home, you are excited about the community life that comes with living in the campus dormitories — that is until Boise State denies your on-campus housing application.

This is the experience of far too many first-year students who enrolled in the fall of 2022.

Boise State received 3,813 housing applications for the fall 2022 semester and only approved 2,877 living assignments. This left 936 students without on-campus housing.

Although Boise State may eventually offer housing to all freshman students, the wait can provide additional challenges for students in a time crunch to find sustainable housing options for the school year. it does not take into account the students leaving the waitlist to find housing elsewhere because they could not get a place to live before the school year started.

Student stories like the ones of freshmen Maddie Larman (biology major) and Lauren Burk (criminal justice major) reveal a first-hand perspective on the issue.

“Once you sign up for a lease and let’s say I was still on the waitlist, I can’t just drop a lease and easily go live on campus,” Burk said. “That’s not how it works.”

Hardly Any Help

In addition to not being able to provide housing to these students, Boise State did not offer much help to applicants who were now left to their own devices to find housing in the city where they would presumably be studying for the next four years.

“If I’m being completely honest, I didn’t feel really supported with housing,” Burk said. “I feel like Boise State has lots of support for other things when it comes to academics, but when it comes to housing, I completely felt like I was on my own.” According to both Burk and Larman, the school only provided them with a scholarship and an online engine for finding a roommate after not being granted housing.

“We have a set number of beds in on-campus housing,” Interim Director of Housing and Residence Life Lynda Tieck said. “If we had 3,813 bed spaces, we would allocate all of them. Every first-year

“The only helpful thing [Boise State] had was the roommate finder, but they did give me a $1,500 scholarship,” Larman said. “The scholarship did not do much though because they would not let us spend it on rent until the first week of school.”

When compared to the housing efforts of other schools, Boise State’s $1,500 scholarship solution starts to lose value.

When the University of Oregon began experiencing a shortage in first-year housing options, their solution was to adjust their dorms to accommodate an extra person. Their two-person dorms could now fit three, according to Oregon’s housing office.

The University of Idaho also faced issues with first-year housing and used a hotel to house freshmen. They operated the hotel as if it was a dorm by locating one of their resident assistants to each floor occupied with students, according to the University of Idaho’s housing office.

“We have tried to mas ter lease apartments and apartment complexes to allocate to our students, but these entities are full, and they don’t need to lease their units to us,” Tieck said. “They are already leased out.”

Unaffordable and unavailable

Finding a place to live off campus is no easy task for Boise State students.

Zillow, an online real-estate marketplace, shows that there are currently 69 four+ bedroom rentals in Boise and each rental only lasts 38 days on average.

If all 69 available four+ bedroom houses were rented to students at Boise State, it would only house 276 more students across four years (freshman to senior year).

Zillow’s website also shows that there currently are only three four+ bedroom apartments available in Boise.

In addition to the problem of availability, the $1,500 scholarship given to students like Burk and Larman would only last two months in Boise.

The median rent price for a four+ bedroom house in Boise is currently $3,048 (approximately $762 per student). This is a $373 month-over-month increase and a $350 year-over-year increase, according to Zillow.

$762 per month on top of natural living expenses such as food might not be manageable for every student enrolling in Boise State, especially for those moving away from home for the first time and learning how to independently manage their finances.

“Personally I think that’s unreasonable for a college student,” Burk said, addressing the cost of renting in Boise. “Yeah, you have to pay it because you don’t want to be homeless, but that’s a lot of money.”

There are currently five apartments near campus occupied mostly by students: IDENTITY Boise, The 208, Green Leaf River Edge, The Vista Apartments and La Pointe at Boise.

The average of the cheapest rent options for the five apartments is approximately $811.80 per month based on the price listings on each apartment complex’s website. This cost does not include each apartment’s additional fees for parking.

For the fall 2022 semester, the cheapest four-bedroom option of the apartments mentioned is The 208 Apartments charging $659 and the most expensive is IDENTITY Boise charging $1,059.

Both Burk and Larman were unable to find housing at The 208 Apartments but were able to pick up someone’s lease at The Vista West Apartments for $900 per month including parking.

“It kind of sucks because freshmen in their first semester don’t really know the flow of school or how classes are going to go,” Larman said. “You don’t know how to balance your social life, mental health and academic life, and figuring that out and paying rent at the same time just got way too much way too quickly.”

The

need

For A More Sustainable Option

For many students, bills attached to apartment housing can quickly add up.

“I am transferring sadly because I can’t afford my rent,” Larman said. “I can’t balance full-time work and full-time school, and the whole reason I am over here is because of school so there’s kind of no point.”

Because of the expensive rent, Larman decided to move back in with her mom in Oregon and pursue the spring semester at Boise State online. Once the semester is over, she will be transferring to Eastern Oregon University.

“Maddie transferring was really hard,” Burk said. “I know that she wishes she stayed, but financially it just wasn’t work- ing out for her.”

Although there will be more housing available through VERVE Boise and Uncommon Boise by the fall 2023 semester, most apartments are raising the cost of rent for the new lease year.

La Point at Boise is raising the rent for their four-bedroom apartment from $870 to $905, The 208 Apartments from $659 to $685 and The Vista Apartments from $680 to $710, according to their respective websites.

Green Leaf River Edge is keeping its rent the same, and IDENTITY Boise is lowering their rent from $1,059 to $959.

“I think that the apartment complexes in Boise take advantage of broke college students by upping the rent to $900 a month and charging $125 per month for parking passes,” Larman said.