Apartment Shopping for the Holidays
Daily Trojan -- December 3, 2007
By: Elizabeth Kenigsberg
Thanks to the physical constraints of University Park Campus, limited availability of TrojanHousing and the steep prices and/or other problems associated with non-university-owned student housing, apartment shopping will be haunting many of us through winter break and beyond.
A never-ending saga, the issues of student housing on and around University Park Campus only grow more wearisome as the university expands.
The unfortunate combination of limited housing and a growing residential community, along with the lawsuit of a major student housing company, makes finding adequate housing more difficult each year.
Our school is well aware of the escalating problems associated with our growing residential community; it promises TrojanHousing for the first two years at USC, and is now suing Conquest so Urban Partners can hurry up the process of building a large student-housing complex.
And more than just administrators recognizing the issues at hand, students are voicing their concerns loud and clear as Undergraduate Student Government has busied itself with combating housing problems, courting the administration to create an off-campus housing division with Student Affairs to aid students with their many housing qualms.
Although many predict the university will support USG's petition to form a department that would, potentially, provide students a database of approved off-campus student housing, the problems with housing won't end there.
According to a Los Angeles Times article concerning the trials and tribulations of USC's burgeoning student community in a rough neighborhood, a USC-commissioned analysis found USC students shelled out $192 million last year for off-campus housing.
Certainly, as USC only provides housing for 7,000 of its 33,000 students, the total amount spent on off-campus housing is going to be high.
Nevertheless, rent prices around campus remain high as there is little supply to meet the demand.
The article cites a study conducted by the Urban Land Institute that said USC is not meeting the demand for student housing, and that USC ought to do more to assure those needs are met.
Were more TrojanHousing options made available and were USC to construct, as the Urban Land Institute recommends, higher-density housing developments, the housing question might be a question no longer.
Sure, many might gripe about TrojanHousing, but the complaints are not nearly as numerous or severe as those with off-campus housing; in fact, the biggest complaint I've heard has been about lottery numbers and not getting into Webb Tower.
But with off-campus housing, the problems are immense. We've all heard the horrors of roach-infested complexes or abusive landlords, whether they come from Conquest or another housing vendor.
If TrojanHousing, however, were to take more of its students under its wings, the university would be accountable for ensuring the comfort, convenience and safety of its students.
As it stands, TrojanHousing guarantees your residence will fall within the patrol area of the Department of Public Safety and will be a part of Campus Cruiser and USC tram routes. The university is also responsible for furnishing and maintaining your residence.
Granted the problem, or the solution, of student housing doesn't end with TrojanHousing consuming more of student housing or constructing additional residences - which, as many are quick to point out, pose problems for our neighborhood in South Los Angeles.
The face of the community is changing, leaving some locals high and dry.
The answer to our problems as students doesn't lie in tearing down local homes and evicting community members.
It's a dilemma universities such as Columbia have faced, and as the demographic of our area keeps changing, so must we.
USC, its students and catering off-campus companies must figure out how to meet the needs of university students without compromising our neighbors.
As we are in an urban setting, high-rise, high-density buildings would certainly blend in with our landscape, without eating away at too much land area.
While the Gateway Project and the Figueroa Corridor might meet these needs, there are concerns that the rent for such homes would mirror the prices of Tuscany apartments.
So now, as I will soon be making my transition from sophomore to junior, I, like many others, will be released from TrojanHousing's nest (unless I get lucky) to spend my winter break and much of next semester trying to find housing - an effort that I'm thinking will be made even easier with the Conquest lawsuit.
