Tackling a tough
problem: graduate student
housing crunch
BY MARISA CIGARROA
Nancy Tsai knew from
experience that the housing situation for graduate
students living off campus was bleak. But the doctoral
student in mechanical engineering didn't know just how
bleak until she conducted an informal survey last summer
of graduate student experiences in off-campus apartment
hunting.
Approximately 90 graduate
students who did not receive fall quarter housing
assignments and 16 students who just wanted to voice
their concerns about housing responded to the survey,
which Tsai conducted by e-mail.
One of the more startling
findings was that several students said they were
considering taking a second job or taking out a loan in
order to meet their cost of living requirements. One
student reported having to take a leave of absence from
her program for one quarter to earn money because she
could not afford living off campus on the stipend she
received at Stanford.
In a written report
summarizing the findings, Tsai urged university
administrators to take immediate steps to remedy the
situation. "For Stanford to continue as a quality
research institute," she wrote, "the university
must consider ways to improve a graduate student's
quality of life."
Her message came across
loud and clear.
A group of key university
officials has been brainstorming since the summer for
ways to help solve the current graduate student housing
crunch that has left a record number of students who
sought on-campus housing this year to fend for
themselves.
"Everybody in the
administration is aware of the crisis character of this
situation," said Tom Wasow, associate dean of
graduate policy and a member of the group that has been
exploring the housing issue since the summer. "It is
something that we are very concerned about and we are
trying to formulate plans to help alleviate it as quickly
as we can in a responsible manner."
Other members of the group
include Tim Warner, vice provost for budget and
auxiliaries management; Keith Guy, director of housing
and dining services; Michael Rosenthal, associate vice
provost for capital planning and management; David
Neuman, university architect; and James Montoya, vice
provost and dean of student affairs. At some point in the
future, graduate students also will be involved in the
conversations, officials said.
In recent months, faculty
members have voiced concerns that the soaring rental and
housing prices in Silicon Valley will begin to drive
prospective graduate students away from Stanford.
"It's not just
graduate students who have come to me to complain,"
Wasow said. "There is a sense among a lot of faculty
that we are losing some of the graduate students who we
would really like to come here to other universities
because they look at the cost of living here and say to
themselves, 'I can't live on Stanford's stipend in that
area.' "
According to Tsai's
survey, students sometimes have to search for months to
find housing and they wind up having to pay anywhere from
50 to 150 percent of their student incomes on rent.
David Aaron Krieger, a
fourth-year graduate student in the applied physics
department, says that he, for one, will no longer
encourage prospective students to come to Stanford.
"I'll advise friends to go somewhere else, all other
things being equal, since a lot of their free time and
money will go toward housing," he said.
Krieger was denied housing
for the fall after having lived on campus for three
years, moving to a different location each year. Now he
shares an apartment with a friend and commutes to campus
on his bicycle.
Not only has the move been
expensive, he has found the social, psychological and
academic problems associated with moving off campus to be
particularly irksome. "I don't live near my
colleagues or many of my friends so it is much harder to
meet people for dinner or to hang out," he said.
"I spend over an hour a day commuting, time that
could be spent studying."
The university can
accommodate about 9,200 students in campus housing, which
includes about 92 percent of its undergraduates and 46
percent of its graduate students. Although a record
number of graduate students who wanted to live on campus
were turned down this year, Guy pointed out that Stanford
was able to meet its housing policies of guaranteeing
housing units for all first-year graduate students and
students with children who have been at Stanford four
years or fewer and who have applied by a certain
deadline, and agreed to be placed anywhere on campus.
Last May, 3,884 graduate
students entered the housing lottery compared to 3,143
the previous year. A total of 591 students remained
unhoused after a second round of assignments was held in
July, more than double the number of students who
remained unhoused after the same lottery in 1996. While
there were 43 graduate vacancies left after a
"walk-in" attended by 90 students at the
beginning of fall quarter, the rooms that were not taken
tended to be located in areas that many students deem
less desirable, such as in a basement, so they opted to
take their chances and search for housing elsewhere.
According to a recent San
Jose Mercury News article, the average rent in Palo
Alto has gone up 33 percent in the last three years, with
a 20 percent increase in the last year alone. A glance at
the classified section of a local paper shows that one
bedroom apartments in the Palo Alto area rent for between
$900 and $1,200 per month.
Considering the average
monthly graduate student stipend is between $1,200 and
$1,600, this is a flat-out impossibility for most
students, says Goldberry Long, a second-year Stegner
Fellow in creative writing (fiction), who is a member of
the Graduate Student Council.
Sharing an apartment with
a roommate isn't much better, Long notes. "If you
look at the stipends, those rents are still much more
than the recommended 25 percent of monthly income,"
she said.
To make matters worse, she
adds, the occupancy rate in the area is close to 100
percent. "Even if someone can afford an apartment on
the Peninsula, it's going to be hard to find," she
said.
In the past, students who
wanted to live close to campus could find cheaper housing
in East Palo Alto, Long said. But now, rents have
increased there too. "Of the ten students in my
class," Long said, "only three of us live in
the immediate area. The other seven live in San
Francisco, which had more available housing at a cheaper
rate. This means they have to commute, of course, which
means that they are much less a part of the Stanford
community, which is a loss to everyone."
Even if graduate students
manage to find affordable housing, they constantly worry
that their landlords are going to slap them with huge
rent increases. Jeff Zacks, a graduate student in
psychology, recently returned from his honeymoon to find
that the Menlo Park one-bedroom cottage where he lived
had been sold. The new owner increased the monthly rent
from $1,000 to $1,900, forcing Zacks and his wife to look
for a new place to live. They eventually moved to a
one-bedroom unit in Redwood City, where they pay a
monthly rent of $1,300.
Many students who are
living in housing close to Stanford feel so fortunate to
have found a place nearby that they refrain from calling
their landlords to get things fixed because they fear
repair costs will come back to haunt them in the form of
a whopping rent increase.
"I have the landlord
from hell, but with this housing market, finding a place,
especially with a cat, is next to impossible," said
a graduate student in biology who lives in a cottage
behind a house in Palo Alto.
After a roof repair, the
landlord raised the rent by $200 a month. "I deal
with her now by not asking for anything," said the
student, who asked not to be identified. "I think
what tenants are dealing with off campus is horrible. I
have already been to legal counseling twice. The
landlords have a lot of power right now."
Some solutions to the
housing crunch that are being explored by university
officials include building more graduate housing on
campus, buying or leasing property off campus to rent or
sublet to students, increasing graduate student stipends
and reviewing current graduate student housing assignment
policies.
But nothing has been
decided on any of these matters, said Wasow, who stressed
that these suggestions are just preliminary ideas that
are being discussed.
One of the attractions of
building more housing on campus or acquiring property off
campus is that both are long-term investments that
eventually pay for themselves, Wasow said. Building on
campus seems to be preferable, he explained, because it
makes more economic sense and would reduce traffic while
fostering a sense of community among graduate students.
But the decision to add
more housing on campus is not as easy as one would think.
If the Board of Trustees, for example, were to approve
such a proposal, it would then have to pass through
various local and county regulatory agencies, a process
that can take several years to complete, Wasow explained.
"It's far from being the case that we can say,
"Oh, we own the land, let's slap up a building
here," he said.
Another consideration has
to do with the law of supply and demand, Guy said.
"The problem I think for us is that we don't know
whether this is a phenomenon that is going to be with us
forever or if this is a spike in the local economy that
will then level out and will take care of itself."
Mandating an increase in
graduate student stipends is considered to be a quick-fix
solution, but it, too, is a complex matter because a lot
of students are supported by faculty research grants, not
Stanford money per se, Wasow said.
"If we mandate that
stipends for research assistants have to go way up, that
would make it harder for these faculty members to get
their research grants funded," he said. "Either
that or they would have to reduce the number of research
assistants they hire, so it's not entirely in our hands
to do that."
According to Guy, the
housing office will be reviewing its graduate student
assignment policies this year to ensure that the process
is a fair one that gives priority to those students who
most need housing.
Changes recommended by a
policy review, Guy said, "may in fact help us a
little bit, but it certainly won't add new beds to the
system, which I think is best solution." SR
|
