Some landlords are requiring multi-year leases
Students living off-campus from Providence colleges and universities this year
are facing higher rents, more demanding landlords and are moving farther away
from campus, say college and university officials.
Meanwhile, some schools are focusing on more on-campus housing.
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Rhode Island School of Design students primarily share their rentals with Brown University, but higher rents and limited housing have forced them farther from campus, according to Brian Janes, director of resident life at RISD.
“Students want to be closest to campus, but that’s directly related to the price of the apartments,” he said. “I have seen students going farther and farther afield to find housing.”
The majority of Johnson & Wales students live off-campus; 3,300 live on-campus and 4,700 off. Many of them are having difficulty finding an affordable apartment, according to Elaine Petronio, the school’s international housing coordinator.
At Brown University, freshmen and sophomores are required to live on-campus. In their junior or senior year they can petition to live off-campus, said Mark Nickel, a university spokesman.
“Brown is a predominantly residential school,” he said. “We’re not a commuter school and parking is relatively tight.”
Providence College students living off-campus this year are finding their apartments rented by students from other universities, according to Ed Caron, vice president for college relations and planning, but the college has brought them back to campus, reducing the off-campus population by 60 percent.
RISD students live scattered throughout the city, Janes said, on Federal Hill, in Fox Point and Olneyville, but proximity is important and a concern for the school. The average rent last year was $550 to $600 per person.
“I remember three or four years ago getting a call from a mother whose son was renting a one-bedroom apartment on Benefit Street for $1,400 a month,” he said. “She wanted to make sure that was the going rate. Since then rents have only gone up.”
The school has 800 beds, not enough for its student body of 2,200, which prompted the creation of 500 more in converting the former Hospital Trust building at 15 Westminster St. into student living space.
“There has been significant unmet demand for at least 10 years,” Janes said. “Eventually they get something but there have been some real sad stories of people living on couches. I’ve seen lots of traditional student housing gentrified,” rented to professionals or turned into condos.
Landlords are also placing higher demands on students – like having a parent co-sign a lease or forcing students to sign multi-year leases – to ensure they’ll get paid, he said.
“It’s certainly affecting those students who are cost-conscious,” Janes said. “Some students can afford to rent really expensive apartments, but others are on their own. That’s why we wanted to provide more housing – it’s beginning to affect the community here.”
Many of the international students at Johnson & Wales looking for housing close to campus are having trouble finding something affordable, Petronio said. She places the majority of the undergraduates and graduates in apartments on Federal Hill and the East Side.
Petronio said often she has to show them eight or 12 apartments “because they tell me they just can’t afford it.” Proximity to campus is key for new students, she said, but most of the graduate students rent for one year, and then move out of the city. There is always a supply – albeit expensive – of housing for students.
Average rents for the most popular one- and two-bedroom apartments are $650 to $1,000 a month, and three-bedroom apartments range from $900 to $1,200 or more. The less popular four-bedroom apartments cost $1,200 to $1,800, she said.
“There aren’t too many $650s,” Petronio said. “Those are the families that have been on the Hill for years and can afford (it).”
Students usually settle in Cranston, Johnston, Smithfield, East and North Providence. The Regency Plaza downtown has also been good about renting units to students, she said. This term, there are about 20 students living there.
Brown University has 5,855 undergraduate students, with a housing capacity of 4,629, with 21 percent of the students, or 1,156, living off-campus. Most of them are seniors.
Brown’s rental housing market was softer this year compared to last, according to Gail Medbury, director of rental facilities at the university. Students rent in the Pitman Street area, north to Olney Street, and while rents increased for students at other schools, Medbury said rents for Brown students remained stable or dropped.
Young professionals have taken advantage of low interest rates and are buying, leaving more apartments open to students, she said. In August, it was still possible for a student to find an apartment near campus.
First-year medical student Mike Wang, from Houston, Texas, said he didn’t have much trouble finding an apartment this year. He has the same landlord as last year and lives with 11 other students, but there is off-street parking and rent didn’t go up much.
“If you work quickly enough you can find a decent place,” he said. Wang said the average rent for places like his – he lives on Barnes Street – is $400 to $550 per person. He started looking for a place in fall of last year. There are some RISD students and a student from PC living with him, he said.
At Providence College, a new suite-style residence hall unveiled this week will provide on-campus housing for 349 additional students and has allowed the college to reduce the concentration of students off-campus from 1,400 to less than 600.
“In 1993-94 we had 1,400 students living in the surrounding neighborhood,” Caron said. “We made the decision then to return to campus as many students as possible because we are a residential-based college.”
PC keeps track of all the rental properties surrounding the campus, and where its students are renting. Most of them rent in the Elmhurst neighborhood, and out of the total 350 to 400 properties, PC students rent 30 percent, he said.
Finding apartments and housing hasn’t been an issue for students, now fewer PC students rent, Caron added. The average rent for students is $300 to $500 per person.
“The bigger issue is the sense that if more college students move onto campus, that it eases the housing market, and that’s just an oversimplification,” he said.
