February 9, 2023 - Spring Housing

Spring housing Spring housing guide guide

3 Grad Student Housing in Old Leonardtown

4 The Housing HorseRace

5 Housing resources

6 Affordable housing in Cp

7 Robots could take over the kitchen

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UMD real estate offi ce plans grad student housing in Old Leonardtown

The project is still early in planning stages but is tentatively estimated to house approximately 800 people and is slated to be completed in fall 2026.

By Marwa Barakat | @marwa_b10 | Staffwriter

Representatives also raised concerns about the proximity of the housing site — which might house graduate students and their families — to Fraternity Row due to issues of noise from parties and safety worries from harassment from undergraduate students.

Jillian Rothschild, the government and politics department representative, expressed concern about younger women who are both graduate students and work as teaching assistants walking in the area and possibly getting catcalled by one of their students.

“Something to keep in mind going

forward, is how to offer graduate student housing but not right next to a lot of the undergrad housing, just because it is really hard when you’re an instructor but you look like you could be the age of these undergrads too,” Rothschild said.

John Childress, the vice president of development and special projects at Mosaic Development Partners, stressed that because the development is still early in the process, they want to build the site with graduate student feedback in the form of focus groups and surveys that will likely start in January 2023.

“We want to do this with the student input as number one priority, as well

The University of Maryland’s real estate office is planning graduate student housing at Old Leonardtown, according to a Friday presentation to the GSG.

The project is still early in planning stages, but the new development is tentatively estimated to house approximately 800 people and is slated to be completed in fall 2026, according to Edward Maginnis Jr., the assistant vice president of the university’s real estate office.

The real estate office is working with the Terrapin Development Company, Mosaic Development Partners and Campus Apartments. The new development comes as the university paused development on the Western Gateway project in October 2021, which would have provided more graduate student housing, after backlash over environmental concerns.

Although the project is still early in its development and there aren’t building designs yet, the companies presented the general layout of the site and some of their main priorities for the new housing development, including creating safe pathways for pedestrians and cyclists.

Developers were not able to give a firm answer on the price range of the apartments, concerning Graduate Student Government representatives.

According to Maginnis, the project still needs to establish the breakdown of units — the number of studio and multi-person apartments — in order to establish prices that will provide affordable and accommodating housing for the most students.

With the combination of the Graduate Hills & Gardens apartments and graduate apartments in Courtyards, Maginnis estimated there are currently about 845 beds available for more than 10,000 graduate students enrolled at this university.

The assembly also addressed the need for family and pet-friendly units.

Jennifer Mesiner, the representative for the Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership program, noted that when she arrived at this university with her two dogs, she wasn’t eligible to live in the Graduate Hills & Gardens apartments because of their cats-only policy.

“Students aren’t going to get rid of pets they already own to get access to this housing,” Mesiner said.

A map displays the University of Maryland’s real estate office’s plan for new graduate student housing at Old Leonardtown. (screenshot via zoom)

The Housing Horserace

By Natalie Weger | @natalie_weger | Sta Writer

With the spring semester and study abroad season underway, some students scramble to sublet their lease. Social media apps such as Facebook are flooded with posts claiming that their sublease is the best.

Some students secured a successful sublease after a few months of searching, while others were left to continue to pay rent for an empty apartment.

Sophomore computer science major Shiv Patel had a successful sublease last summer and is looking to sublease again. The first time, it took him one to two months to find someone to take over his lease.

“Well, the first thing was that I wasn’t consis-

tently reposting what I had, I would just post in one group and then just expect people to reach out to me,” Patel said.

Patel has gotten multiple responses for his current lease within two to three days. “It was much more efficient to post on Facebook groups than Facebook marketplace, Patel said.

“And even if it’s the same post, just go out of your way to copy and paste it and just consistently keep doing that maybe once or twice a week,” Patel said. “And you’ll probably just be flooded with a bunch of different requests.”

It may have been helpful that Patel added flexibility to the moving date, he said. It is also a matter of how you style your posts, according to Patel.

“The main thing I would say is it’s definitely better to personalize it in the sense that, try to take as many pictures as possible.” Patel said. “Otherwise, it’s just another post that says ‘this is my room with this much money.’”

apartment by about 30 percent. You can save more money and time if you cut down price offerings earlier, he said.

“I think a lot of students just look for prices around $800, $900 [a month], but you have to get lucky to find someone who wants it over $1000, most of the time,” Muyeen said.

People are more willing to reach out regarding a sublease if the price is negotiable, he said.

Senior architecture major Isabel Anderson found someone to sublease her apartment through a personal connection with one of her roommates. She advises people to find subleases through word of mouth.

“So if you put it out there, verbally as well, I think maybe connections can be made like that, instead of just having to rely on sending messages and posting,” Anderson said.

However, some students were unsuccessful in finding someone to sublet their lease.

Senior architecture major Stephen Duranske couldn’t find anyone to sublet his lease at South Campus Commons before studying abroad in the fall semester. Duranske used a housing portal and contact list from Commons.

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Senior aerospace engineering major Adiat Muyeen found someone to sublease his apartment at Tempo-College Park after four months.

“So here’s the thing, if you want to sublease for the spring semester, you gotta do it at the end of the fall semester or during the beginning of winter break for sure,” Muyeen said.

Muyeen had to cut down the price of his

“With the listing I put out there, I had a lot of people contact me who wouldn’t be allowed to lease it because they are grad students or Commons has restrictions on housing by gender,” Duranske said.

Posting specific information on your housing profile can help weed out certain people before they contact you, Duranke said.

Duranske advised that students should start looking to sublease their apartments halfway through the prior semester they want to sublease.

Students continue to use Facebook groups such as Housing, Sublets & Roommates in College Park, Maryland and University of Maryland (UMD) Housing and Sublease Community to find potential sublease opportunities.

Housing resources

Where to find off-campus housing:

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND OFF-CAMPUS HOUSING DATABASE

The university’s online database for off-campus housing provides the latest house and apartment vacancies around the campus. With your student account, you can add a listing or look for a roommate while providing a roommate profile of your own.

FACEBOOK

On select University of Maryland student Facebook groups, you can find student subletters and students looking for roommates. A comment or direct message showing interest could put you in contact with the individual who’s listing.

REAL ESTATE MARKETPLACES

Online real estate marketplaces offer listings for entire apartments and houses in College Park. Many allow you to filter out listings by price range, amenities and more. Some offer maps, so you can figure out a property’s proximity to this university’s campus.

Renter’s insurance information:

Renter’s insurance can protect you from a liability lawsuit as well as your personal property when unexpected events such as fires, flooding or vandalism occur, depending on the policy.

Many major insurance companies hold renter’s insurance policies. The average cost of renter’s insurance was $14.90 per month in 2021, according to Business Insider. You may also be covered by your parents’ insurance depending on their policy.

New affordable housing is coming to College Park in 2025

By Ilana Williams | @ilana_willi | Staffwriter

Flats at College Park, a 317 unit low-income housing development, is expected to be built between Delaware and Cherokee streets by 2025, according to developers.

The apartment complex is expected to have one, two and three-bedroom units ranging from approximately $1,200 to $2,500 per month. It will be one of the only designated affordable housing developments in College Park alongside Atworth and Branchville Gardens, said Terry Schum, the planning and community development director in College Park.

The current median household income in College Park is $69,736. The federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program subsidized the apartments, so rent is based on area median income and state-determined rent control rates, said Danny Copeland, an analyst at RST Development.

Along with the apartments, there will be about 4,000 square feet of commercial space intended for Meals on Wheels, a nonprofit organization.

“It’s going to be a good project for College Park,” Schum said. “In addition to providing affordable housing for the

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city, it’s also going to help improve the Route 1 streetscape.”

The developers have not broken ground, but the project has gone through the entitlement process and has been approved to work on their detailed site plan, Schum said.

“We lack newly constructed, affordable housing,” Schum said. “Most of the new construction here has been student housing, so to get this project that focuses on families is really important.”

College Park is always looking to have affordable housing, Schum said. But it’s tough to do because it needs to be part of a program through the state or federal government.

“Low-income housing is an important component of every community,” Willow Lung-Amam, an associate professor of urban studies and planning, said. “It recognizes that housing is a basic human right.”

Housing is affordable to families if they’re not spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent, LungAmam added. College Park is an area of concentrated poverty — areas where overall poverty is at 30 percent or more — because students live in the area and

often don’t have stable incomes.

Because there are so many students who live in College Park, the data is skewed and overlooks long-term residents in need of affordable housing, Lung-Amam said.

“All municipalities [should ensure] that there’s housing choices in every community,” she said. “It’s not just serving the residents, it’s also serving to make sure that we’re living in an equitable reason where there are housing choices for all people at all income levels.”

Unaffordable housing is a driving reason for people to move from the city to the suburbs, and also pushes families out of the region. Communities are losing low-income families that have helped to provide services in the area, Lung-Amam said.

In areas with high incomes, high job growth and strong demographics, housing tends to be too high for people who need housing close to work, Copeland said.

“It speaks to the mission of what we’re trying to create here,” Copeland said. “We’re focused on building community.”

The new development, called Flats at College Park, will be one of the only designated affordable housing developments in College Park.

The sign in front of the proposed low-income housing site in College Park, Maryland, on Feb. 2, 2023. The building will replace three motels and contain hundreds of units. (daryl perry/the diamondback)

Robots could take over the kitchen

By Nataraj Shivaprasad | Managingeditor

As viewers of any competitive cooking show may contend, cooking can be an art form — but right now, it’s a dying art. Despite economical options for ingredients and kitchenware, people are cooking less than ever. Already, we all know people who seldom venture into the kitchen, only to reheat premade food when they do.

In many cases, cooking is a predictable, algorithmic process. When we follow an online recipe to a T, we’re simply copying a process that anyone can do with more or less the same tools and ingredients. This is exactly the kind of process artificial intelligence excels at.

It’s only a matter of time before food assembles itself, and advancements in a number of technology spaces offer a glimpse into a perfect storm that will revolutionize our relationship with food in ways we aren’t thinking about. Robots are already finding a place in commercial kitchens. With standard menu items that favor convenience, simplicity and consistency, fast food is primed for automation, and it’s seen a lot of development in this kind of technology. Just last month, McDon-

ald’s opened its first largely automated location. Chipotle and White Castle reportedly have deployed Miso Robotics’ Flippy 2, an AI-powered robot arm that can do things such as operating fry stations. This is just the beginning. While automating all the ways to cook is a Herculean task, we already have the capabilities to automate parts of this process. For example, how might you know when bread is ready to take out of the oven? When the bread rises. What about pizza? When the crust is golden brown. Using machine learning models, you can train an oven-like appliance to recognize when bread has risen or a crust is golden brown and signal when any item is ready.

What about actual preparation? There are existing machines that make bread. And Costco uses pizza-making robots to do everything from dispensing sauce to ensuring an even bake. These machines might be specialized, but the tasks they perform could be broadened over time.

Coming back to consumer kitchens, it may be easy to dismiss automation given the sheer variety of tastes and dishes people currently produce, even

with kitchens that share the same basic appliances. But do you really need a sandwich made exactly your way, if a robot can save you the hassle of making it in the first place?

The same trend of sacrificing unique culinary experiences for cheap, reliable ones that gave rise to fast food could be readily adopted at the level of home kitchens. For those still cooking, there’s access to meal kit services, such as HelloFresh, which deliver the right amount of ingredients and accompanying instructions to take independent thought out of the cooking process.

Whether this looks like self-sufficient robot kitchens in every house or eliminating the need for a kitchen entirely with mass-produced local food delivery networks, one thing is clear: This would fundamentally change our relationship with food.

In such a world, it would be easier than ever to be healthy. With wearable tech getting better at tracking calories we expend, robots that cook for us could monitor the other side of the equation: caloric intake. Apps can already give us a rough estimate of calories consumed through input

on what we eat. Making that process automatic and accurate could enable people to more optimally approach their fitness goals.

And we would be able to do that with no planning on our end. When ChatGPT, the AI chatbot that’s taking the world by storm first came out, my friend and I experimented with asking it to create a diet plan. We inputted our age, physical proportions, fitness goals and what we had in the fridge. The chatbot spat out a detailed plan of what we could eat each day of the week for every meal. It even offered some variety — the same ingredients could be prepared in a number of ways. Now, the AI just needs the hardware to make the food.

Taking away the necessity for planning and preparing food would also yield enormous time savings. We’ve already come far along in addressing our basic survival needs from the hunter and gatherer days. Freeing up even more time in food preparation could unlock even more human potential — or just give us more time to waste on mindless activities. Hopefully, it’s the former.

A Hyundai Robotics robot cafe on display at CES 2022. (nataraj shivaprasad/for the diamondback)