I lived in off campus housing at Ohio State for 5 years, the only way it was “affordable” for me then was to share a place with several roommates. And we had neighbors that were not students all the time. Some were of college age that just wanted to live near the party kids, but others were just regular people. The further you got from the walk to campus the more it was mixed between students and non-students.
I look back at it now and realize that off campus was just a glorified slum for young kids.
I’m right next to a college town. Rents there are no different than anywhere else in the area, but we’re also right outside a major city, so students are competing for rentals with everyone else. Their advantage is their willingness to live in less than desirable areas and they don’t mind living together. $3,000 a month for a 5-bedroom house is a lot for many, but split 9-10 ways it’s very doable.
In fact rentals there may actually be slightly higher, as the owners are well aware of who they’re renting to.
I went to a large public university in a small city 30+ years ago. Lived off campus in an apartment complex where I would guess 75% of residents were students. The management was all about dealing with the issues of renting to college students. At the time there was still a town apart from the university. People who lived and worked in lived that weren’t directly or indirectly related to the university.
That complex was gutted and rebuilt in the last ten years. My nephew now lives in that refurbished version. Now almost no one there is not a student. The town has now been completely overwhelmed by the university. Enrollment is up about 50% from when I was there, but it seems like the University has physically expanded by much more than that. A lot more buildings and houses that now dominate “downtown”. Every business is either catering to student life needs or is dependent on collaboration or contracts with the university.
Based on the visits we have just made to the universities my kid may be attending this fall, if she goes to an urban university (middle of a top 10 city) off campus housing will be mix of students and non-students. While in a smaller town/city context it will be almost 100% students.
Not even slightly. I went to the university of Manchester in the UK (northern former industrial town, pretty cheap housing in the terraced houses that used to house industrial workers)
I went there 1995-1999 and we paid 35 quid each a month four of us (the landlord or one of her family would come round and collect the four rent checks each month). So 140 a month for a very crappy terraced house.
If I look now there is barely anything for that per week!
I personally think the way inflation is calculated is bs. If it was accurate you would expect that 140 pounds rate to have gone up to 330 pounds, instead it’s almost twice that.