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Two of the Boston area’s biggest contributors to the population of students living off-campus say they will return to in-person instruction in the fall, a sign the area’s urban apartment market may return to its typical tightness in the coming months.
Northeastern University and Boston University released messages from senior leaders in recent days announcing their intention to return to traditional, in-person classes starting this fall, even though COVID-19 may not be fully eradicated by then.
Boston University is basing its decision on the assumption that most students and staff will be vaccinated by September, President Robert Brown said in a letter to students and parents first reported by The Daily Free Press, the school’s student-run newspaper, allowing the school to host classes and operate dorms and dining halls without social distancing protocols. The school also assumes that relatively widespread international travel will be possible and will not continue offering remote learning options for its classes outside of “very specific” graduate programs. To guard against outbreaks of the coronavirus, the school plans to continue its so-far-successful internal testing program “at some level,” Brown wrote.
Northeastern plans a similar approach, Provost David Madigan wrote in a letter to students, faculty and staff last week.
“We developed many innovations and experiments to make the most of this unprecedented period, and some of these new approaches will continue to serve us well into the future. But the past year has reinforced the importance of our physical campuses for teaching, learning, research, and work. As [Northeastern] President [Joseph] Aoun has said, the ‘power of place’ remains central to our mission of transmitting and creating knowledge,” Madigan wrote.
According to city of Boston data, the largest contributors to the area’s demand for private, off-campus housing pre-pandemic were Northeastern University (6,209 undergraduate students living off-campus), UMass Boston (6,133 students), Boston University (4,448 students), Berklee College of Music (3,223 students), Suffolk University (1,905 students) and Boston College (1,330 students).
The absence of tens of thousands of students from Boston’s rental market in 2020 helped cause record softness, with average asking rents down 11 percent citywide, and even steeper declines – up to 20 percent – in core neighborhoods near these schools, according to a recent report from The Collaborative Cos.
