Lily Fisher

Auburn Housing Application presenting the words “On-campus housing is currently full at this time”. Students at schools such as Auburn are facing this unfortunate message and forcing them to search for alternative forms of living.

Many universities and colleges are dealing with a huge demand for on-campus housing. As students are being accepted into colleges and universities and they begin committing and looking forward to their future, the usual main step for most is to find a roommate. Instagram and other social media websites have been helpful for that process but they aren’t able to help with what to do if there are no dorm rooms available. Campus housing shortages have been a huge obstacle for many.

With a large increase in applicants to almost every university, the challenge of finding a place for each of those students to reside is difficult. Most colleges have multiple dorm halls for freshmen to choose from but with the large incoming freshman classes, there aren’t enough dorm rooms to guarantee on-campus housing for first years.

“Housing at Auburn is pretty tricky. I know 50% of freshmen live on campus, 50% live off. I didn’t have any luck getting anything on campus, so I recently started looking at places off campus. I called about four different places that were within walking distance of campus and asked them about their availability for next year. Two were fully booked, one only had studios available and one had, according to them, a single quad apartment left with 3/4 bedrooms available. There were no other options really so I jumped at the opportunity and I got approved but it was stressful,” senior Brayden Fogarty said.

A very stressful aspect of campus housing shortages is how expensive it may be to find a home outside of the campus. Without fully guaranteed housing, students may have to pay an extensive amount of money for housing for up to three years which is not cheap and can be a burden for students’ families, especially those on financial aid.

“I’ve been researching housing at UC San Diego and it’s not guaranteed housing for first-year or after-first-year students. Only half of all students get a contract for their sophomore year and then after that off campus housing is expensive because it is in a wealthy area,” senior Sydney Freund said.

At the University of South Carolina, their newspaper “the Daily Gamecock” stated that the over-admitting of freshmen is creating housing confusion and shortages for upperclassmen. They stated that admitting more students means that the university needs more beds to house such numbers.

“Even though the over-admitting of freshmen mainly creates shortages for upperclassmen and doesn’t really apply to me this upcoming year, it will impact me in my other years which is not great. I don’t want to have to worry that I don’t get the dorm I want,” senior Mary Mercurio said.

Finding housing is just another necessary and complicated step for future freshmen. Even with the newly technologically advanced systems helping students find housing, many students are left unsatisfied and without a place to live because of campus housing shortages.