Category Archives: student housing

The co-op alternative

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 Before Burlingtonians succumb to the blandishments of “purpose-built” student-housing developers, they might do well to consider an alternative with a long tradition of affordability: student co-op housing.

Student housing co-ops are scattered around the country. Perhaps the best known is the Berkeley Student Cooperative, which dates from 1933 and offers housing to about 1,300 students in 20 properties.  Berkeleystudentcoop1According to the co-op’s website, monthly rent is about $745 in a room and board house (compared to $1,354 in a university dorm triple) and $433 to $881 a month for single room in an apartment. (By comparison, the market rate for a one-bedroom apartment is typically over $2,000.) No wonder there are 1,000 students on the waiting list.

And yes, some of those Berkeley co-op houses have game rooms and hot tubs.

A thumbnail case for student co-ops can be found here, on the website of the North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO). Housing co-ops operate on variations of a shared-equity model. Here’s NASCO’s description of a common form:

“In a ‘Market Equity’ coop, a member joins the coop, buys a share, and lives in a unit.  This is similar to something like a condo complex, but instead of owning one condo, you own a share in the whole complex.  When you decide to leave the coop, you can sell your share at whatever the market will pay for it.”

Housing co-ops also come with shared governance, work expectations, and so on. They’re not limited to students, of course. Champlain Housing Trust has five co-ops with 81 apartment units in Burlington, with another one on the way on Bright Street.

You’ll never be faced with this choice, but it never hurts to ask: Which would you rather see on the northeast corner of North Winooski Avenue and Main Street: purpose-built student housing, with a climbing wall, or a student housing co-op without one?

 

At last! Housing that serves a purpose

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Thanks partly to the Burlington Housing Action Plan, which calls for housing up to 900 collegians “potentially on one to two carefully-selected downtown locations,” we’re going to be hearing a lot, over the next few years, about something called “purpose-built student housing.”

That’s because the new wave of student housing around the country is being generated by private developers on behalf of colleges and universities, as would be the case in Burlington. And what these developers say they’re putting up is “purpose-built.”  KnoxSuch as “The Knox,” in Knoxville, Tenn., near the University of Tennessee campus.

Now, you might well wonder: “Purpose-built” housing as opposed to what? Pointless housing? (Perhaps examples of the latter spring immediately to mind.)

So, what does “purpose-built” mean? Here’s the Merriam Webster definition:

Designed and built for a particular use

Like, to be lived in? As in, duh, apartment building? There must be more to it.

Students aren’t the only target of “purpose-built” developments. A cursory Google search turns up “purpose-built” developments for older people, disabled people, mixed-income people. A prime example of the latter is East Lake, a revitalized neighborhood in Atlanta that used to be a rundown public housing project.

Take note: “Purpose-built communities” and “intentional communities” are not the same thing. (“Intentional communities” as opposed to what, you might wonder. Accidental communities?)

The purpose-built phenomenon seems to be hot in Canada. Check out Mirvish Village in Toronto, which prides itself on its diversity. The website does not make it easy to discern, however, how much it costs to live there.

OK, so what’s special about “purpose-built” student housing, as distinct from a plain old privately contracted dorm? (Redstone Lofts on UVM’s campus, privately built and managed, would be an example of the latter, sort of. Nobody was describing that as “purpose-built” when it went up a few years ago.)

The amenities, apparently. knox2Roof decks, hot tubs, climbing walls, flat-screen TVs in every suite, swimming pools, those sorts of things.

Very well, let’s imagine six-story “purpose-built” student housing on the northwest corner of South Winooski Avenue and Main Street, the parking lot next to the fire station. (Presumably the climbing wall and hot tubs would be on the inside, not accessible to passers-by.) Here’s what we’d like to know:

Will the inclusionary zoning ordinance apply, and if not, how can the ordinance be amended to ensure that a decent share of these “purpose-built” units are affordable?