Issues & Analyses: Housing Uncertainty In College Towns

Report On The International Town Gown Association Webinar, “Approaches For Addressing Housing Uncertainty In College Towns”

College students in small units on the first floors of a multi-story building with grad students and older people in more expansive apartments above, and a comfortable ground floor lobby-lounge bringing them all together is one of the ideas cited by panelists at an August 2 webinar called “Housing Uncertainty in College Towns.” Another idea is intentionally designing housing that is so affordable and attractive that graduate students and their families will want to stay in the host city even after finishing their degrees. A university and host town working together to give a local developer a 50-year lease to build and manage student and non-student housing on university property is another, and there are more.

The webinar was the second in a series organized by the International Town Gown Association (ITGA) about housing challenges faced specifically by college towns and the institutions they host, and how they are trying to meet them. Amherst Town Manager Paul Bockelman said in an email, “ITGA’s housing webinar hit home for the Town of Amherst. With over a dozen [Amherst] Town officials (appointed and elected) registered, the webinar clearly struck a chord. We appreciated the opportunity to join other communities in addressing the challenges of housing in a college communlic ity.”

The panelists were Dr. Kenneth Brown, Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Operations Officer of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis; Steven Patterson, Mayor of Athens, Ohio and former member of the faculty at Ohio University; and architect Jeannette Walton of DLR Design Group in San Francisco.

Walton opened with a statement about the current housing preferences of college students and their parents, and how her business designs projects to gain community and municipal support. She explained that for colleges to attract and retain students today, there has to be diversity of choice, which means diverse types and prices of housing for them, although she also indicated that students are clear about their need for privacy and single-occupancy units. “Most students have not had to share a bedroom growing up,” and want their own rooms, she said. 

“[Project designers] can have an eye for doing more than just supporting students, and to [the students and the projects] really being a broader asset to the community.” 
Jeanette Walton, DLR Design Group, San Francisco

Having readily available amenities are important to them too, she said, adding that one way to help community members become invested in students housing is for them to be able to use these amenities, such as gym facilities. “[Project designers] can have an eye for doing more than just supporting students, and to [the students and the projects] really being a broader asset to the community.” Walton cited an example of an 11-story apartment complex in San Francisco with lower-floor residences reserved for college students and higher-floor residences for rent on the open market, with a lobby lounge that encourages community participation and buy-in. She touted the importance of robust community engagement for projects from the onset, and cited a project she’d done that involved a revitalization plan and more than 500 meetings with the community.

In Memphis, Tennessee, Dr. Kenneth Brown was charged with developing housing in a rundown medical district for University of Tennessee medical students and other post-graduates in health-related fields. Brown and fellow Health Science Center administrators involved in planning knew that housing was a critical component for their graduate and medical students, but available property in the district was scant, so they contacted the university, which invited them to use a conveniently located 10-acre parcel it owned. Then they looked for a local developer with a good track record, he said, who would want to give back to the community and who would be responsible not only for planning and building the project but managing the housing once it was completed. With support from the municipality and the state, the university and the local developer arranged a joint venture to create Orleans Station, with 375 residential units on university-owned land that now provides housing for Health Science Center students, staff, and others, and is the nucleus of what he called a relatively vibrant Medical District with 16,000 square feet of retail space, as well as a community garden, restaurants, and other amenities that are starting to move in. There university gave the developer a 50-year lease, and at its conclusion everything on the property will revert back to the university.

“[The university’s] story was fraught with a multitude of challenges, and the commitment and support we were able to get with the alignment of local private developers and local and state support was ultimately what made this project successful.”
Dr. Kenneth Brown, Health Sciences Center, University of Tennessee, Memphis

“The only thing that’s remarkable about our story, and the takeaway message for each and every one,” Brown said, “is that these kinds of projects have a multitude of challenges, but I think any institution within any community can find that partnership with local private developers and the municipality. Our story was fraught with a multitude of challenges [the site turned out to be toxic], and the commitment and support we were able to get with the alignment of local private developers and local and state support was ultimately what made this project successful.”

Important aspects of the process, he noted, included: hiring a capital project planning firm, laying out a five-year master plan for the university, and creating meaningful community engagement. Community engagement involved numerous town halls and public forums, bringing together community members and organizations, developers, elected city and county officials and staff. “We did a lot of forecasting of what we thought our aspirational state would be, and engaged stakeholders very early on in the process as part of our capital master planning process,” he said. 

Brown emphasized that the university’s business is education, not housing. Any divergence of resources to anything other than the institutional mission, which is the education and training of students, is met with fear and apprehension. “Our goal was getting housing without being in the housing business…so we invested very little upfront, other than helping remediate the site” and providing security, Wi-Fi, childcare, gym facilities, and parking. The university did not ask the developer to reserve a certain number of units there for its graduate students, and incoming students are often faced with a year-long waiting list for an apartment there. As for affordability, Brown said that they “look for some marginal decline in cost of adjacent residential capacity in the district,” but did not provide further details.

Steven Patterson was formerly on the faculty of Ohio University and is now the mayor of Athens, Ohio, its host city. Athens has a population of about 30,000, mostly students, he said, and a footprint of about 11 square miles. According to its website, Ohio University has “more than” 20,000 students. “The population of Athens is essentially a student population,” said Patterson, “and a lot of our housing stock is rental units, which really made it challenging when I was on the faculty and driving potential faculty members around the city trying to show them potential housing.” In 1993, the university acquired a former state mental hospital sitting on a beautiful ridge with 700 acres of mostly forested land and a beautiful old building with 700,000 square feet of space and 544 rooms. The university acquired it without a plan for how to use it, and partnered with a regional local development district, the Buckeye Hills Regional Council, and a group called Community Building Partners to establish a New Community Authority , which is a legal way in Ohio and a few other states to contain and develop state-owned properties. (Google defines a New Community Authority as a separate public body governed by a board of trustees that may oversee, coordinate, construct and finance public infrastructure improvements and community facilities.) The property, Patterson said, can become industrial, commercial, cultural, recreational, residential, and educational spaces, and they “zeroed in on the residential and commercial, as we continue to plan.”

He explained that Ohio University has professional schools as well as undergraduate programs, and that students in graduate and professional degree programs don’t want to live in undergraduate-style student housing. “They want to live in places that are more like what they’ll be living in once they get their degrees.” It took working together thoughtfully and intentional, but the municipality and university figured out a way to create both equity-gaining, and rental and commercial properties on the newly acquired property, with a mix of condominiums, rentals, and free-standing units. “There had to be a strong partnership between the city and the university, where we have [shared] thoughtful purpose, knowing that we can only be stronger together. We are very intentional in making this work.”

Part of the property had long been used as a university botany research laboratory, and they didn’t want to lose that, he said. Using one of the New Community Authority’s privileges and opportunities, tax increment financing , they have been able “to incentivize, or help with the capital, for green space and open space that is really helpful for my community,” he said. As a result, about 100 acres will be up for new or re-development and the remaining acreage will be under a nature conservancy with a restriction so that it stays as open spaces, outdoor recreation, and park areas.

Patterson said they have also been finding ways to help developers build affordable housing on undeveloped properties, including equity-bearing properties that will start at $240,000. In particular, Athens wants to increase affordable housing for retirees from the university and other local businesses. “These retirees want to stay in place or [have a place to] downsize here,” he said. “This is another challenge that a lot of other college towns are seeing as well.”

“I want to caution everyone: We do see some development or redevelopment of housing on campus [and] we’re looking forward to seeing more housing…and we’ve seen three great years of increased student enrollment here. But is it sustainable?”
Athens, Ohio Mayor Steven Patterson

“I want to caution everyone: We do see some development or redevelopment of housing on campus [and] we’re looking forward to seeing more housing…and we’ve seen three great years of increased student enrollment here. But is it sustainable?” — Athens, Ohio Mayor Steven Patterson

When asked for his advice about how to go about accomplishing all of this, he said that the first step he would take as a university would be to establish a great — or a good — working relationship with the local government. “Unfortunately, our city council are all blind to the fact that we’re lacking in affordable housing,” he said. Nevertheless, “it wasn’t a difficult sell for me.”

Later, Patterson added a cautious note to the conversation, focusing on shifts he has seen in student enrollments. “To add to this conversation,” he said, “in the 1960s, here in Athens we saw a large influx of the student population with baby boomers…so we saw a lot of development on campus. And all of a sudden, in the ’70s we saw a steep decline in student enrollment. This posed a lot of challenges for the university, and they had to think, ‘What are we going to do with all this additional housing stock we’ve built for the students?’ They went into a holding pattern, but were still bearing the costs and maintenance of all these facilities. When the student population began to grow again, they quickly transitioned to partnership with a private rental housing group — although it’s still the university’s land, they had someone else take care of the renting and more. I want to caution everyone: We do see some development or redevelopment of housing on campus [and] we’re looking forward to seeing more housing…and we’ve seen three great years of increased student enrollment here. But is it sustainable?” Attracting students will become increasingly competitive, he believes, with a great deal depending on how well the university markets and brands itself. “So, what’s going to happen with the housing stock at that point, both on and off campus? It gets interesting, with enrollment waxing and waning.”

Walton, meanwhile, mentioned that the University of California, Berkeley was found to have violated state law because it significantly increased student enrollment without properly analyzing the impacts this would have on the city’s environment.

“…somewhere between 70 and 80% of professional students will stay and live where they trained last — it isn’t like undergraduate students coming and leaving — and we want these people who will stay.”
Dr. Kenneth Brown, Health Sciences Center, University of Tennessee, Memphis

Brown ended with this advice: “We want our medical students and professional students to stay in this community, to live here and experience life here, and eventually to contribute to the community, and the tax base. The research shows that somewhere between 70 and 80% of professional students will stay and live where they trained last — it isn’t like undergraduate students coming and leaving — and we want these people who will stay. We see it as a long game, a worthwhile endeavor, and the [affordable] housing thing is a real consideration. Housing isn’t just a consideration in the context [when people are studying here]. While you’re thinking about housing, think about how some of these people won’t just be transient. I would just encourage everybody to take advantage and think of the much, much longer term than just the transient student that comes there and lives there for a little while and moves on.”