After the utter failure of the University to provide housing for its students, many juniors-to-be find themselves with little choice but to pay the exorbitant rates of exploiting landlords in the area. It is pretty incredible that despite the recession housing costs around campus are still increasing. Now that the University has failed to provide housing to some 200 students, landlords in the area are increasing the rents even further.
Many students simply cannot afford the exorbitant rates and are literally homeless. This is the worst housing crisis in recent memory and drastic measures must be taken immediately in order to alleviate the housing disaster of 2002.
The only real measure that will solve this problem in the long run is to build a large new dorm or even two dorms that will reconnect students with the campus. Unfortunately, the new dorm that is currently being planned will not even begin to address the problems that have emerged during the current housing fiasco.
Until these new dorms are built students will be forced to face the "slum lords" of Medford and Somerville who charge excessive rents for run down apartments. Granted there are a few good landlords who maintain their apartments in good condition and have resisted the urge to let the rents reach these astronomical rates. But I have heard too many horrible stories of landlords who simply do not take care of their apartments and still increase the rent 20 percent each year.
These incredibly high rates are not exclusive to the Medford/Somerville area. Boston, Cambridge and some of the surrounding towns also have incredibly high rents. As a senior who has made the decision to stay in Boston next year against my better judgment, I have recently learned that Boston is the third most expensive metropolitan area to live in the country. I find this a bit odd since there are so many poor college students in the area.
The general problem with the housing rates in the greater Boston area is that college students are not organized enough to be able to enact public policy that will help create affordable housing in the area. Students are only around for four years and are often much more focused on other issues. Furthermore, many students do not vote and are not registered in Massachusetts, and therefore they have little political clout in the state.
University administrators; however, often do have the organizational ability and political clout to successfully lobby for affordable housing in the area but often choose to use their political capital on other issues.
Boston bills itself as the largest and greatest college town in the country, and yet it provides very little for us college students. We have no affordable housing in the area. Public Transportation in Boston closes very early. Bars in the area close early and liquor stores aren't open seven days a week. This hardly sounds to me like a college town with services tailored to college students.
Most universities have a community relations department as well as a lobbying arm. However, neither of these departments typically advocate student needs but rather they try to increase funding for the University and insure that the community at large is pleased with their interaction with the school. Both of these acts are very important pieces of a university administration. My question is: why have they left out a lobby for student needs in the communities?
A university must first and foremost serve its customers - the students. Too often universities such as Tufts get caught up in their peripheral issues instead of focusing on the importance of student satisfaction.
Students should also take some responsibility for this problem and organize themselves instead of just sitting around and complaining. If students from different Boston colleges joined together to lobby local governments, they would be able to affect change on a larger scale.
Tufts is the perfect place to start and housing is the perfect issue to lobby for. I call students and administrators on this campus to work together to create affordable housing in the area. Rent control is a thing of the past in most urban setting; however, there are proven methods of creating affordable housing such as tax incentives and low-interest loans.
With students and administrators working together on this issue, I believe that we will be able to successfully create more affordable housing in the area and ultimately build a better environment where all Tufts students will be able to live in the community in which they learn. It is too late for the 200 students who were shut out of housing this year but with new dorms and the lobbying efforts of students and administrators we will be able to insure that students will not be shut out in the future.
