
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology dormitory under construction at Pacific and Sidney streets in Cambridge, which will house 750 graduate students, sailed through the permitting process in just nine months.
The battle between colleges and communities over student housing is far from over, but city planners say the construction of new dormitories by academic institutions in Boston and Cambridge is helping to free up more apartments for families and other non-student residents.
Even so, the Boston Redevelopment Authority will release a report in June showing that anywhere from 6,400 to 18,514 more dorm beds are needed. If those beds are added, up to 4,628 more housing units in Boston neighborhoods could be freed up.
The report, which is only in the draft stage, is based on surveys the BRA sent to 19 colleges and universities in Boston last summer and fall.
“I am proud of my administration’s efforts to increase dorm beds over the last decade,” Mayor Thomas M. Menino said in a prepared statement. “We have ensured that 10,511 new beds have freed up 2,600 apartments. In addition, approximately 5,000 more dorm beds are in the pipeline and will be built over the next seven to 10 years, freeing up approximately 1,250 apartments. The city’s colleges and universities have helped us to make this substantial progress, but I am confident that they will work with us to do more.”
Susan Elsbree, BRA spokeswoman, reinforced the mayor’s message, saying that all the colleges have been “extremely cooperative.”
Elsbree said it’s hard to measure the overall effect the new dorms have had on rents and apartment availability because more people in general are moving to the city.
“It [the response by colleges] hasn’t hurt,” she said. “The more we can get college students out of the [area’s rental] market, the better it will be for supply and demand.”
The new BRA survey shows that 6,423 full-time students who actually requested housing in dorms did not get it. Additionally, as many as 18,514 full-time students from outside of Boston and the state who needed on-campus housing – but didn’t necessarily request it – didn’t get placed in a college residence hall.
More than 2,600 apartment units have been freed up in Boston over the last decade because of new dorm beds, according to a BRA report released last year.
The report showed that 10,511 dorm beds have been added in the city over the last decade – not including an 817-bed dormitory Boston University opened in September and the 460 beds Northeastern University added to its West campus last fall.
Four dorm beds equal one apartment, said Elsbree. Using that formula, about 319 apartments have been freed up over the last seven months because of the new Northeastern and Boston University dorms.
Despite the addition of thousands of dorm beds, some housing advocates say the colleges are not doing enough.
The Greater Boston Interfaith Organization – a multi-issue group that organizes communities across all religious, ethnic, racial and neighborhood lines – say construction of new student housing isn’t keeping up with expanding enrollment.
“We’re calling on colleges to add 7,500 new beds and voluntarily cap enrollment,” said Ari Lipman, a GBIO organizer. “Currently, colleges are on track to add less.”
Lipman said there are 100,000 more students brought to Boston than there are dorm beds for them. Boston has about 30,000 dorm beds, he said.
The influx of students – who are willing to pay higher rents because they usually split the cost between several roommates – in some neighborhoods is driving rents too high.
Lipman cited a report from the governor’s office that showed that for every neighborhood which is comprised of 10 percent students, the average median rent rises by about $75 per month.
In Lipman’s Mission Hill neighborhood, which has about 33 percent students, that translates to about $225 extra each month that he must pay for rent, he said.
Lipman said GBIO will help ease tensions between neighborhood groups and college when new student housing is proposed.
“We are willing to help colleges get housing sited,” Lipman said.
However, if colleges don’t cap enrollment and refuse to create new housing, the GBIO vows to urge communities to block any expansions – through zoning restrictions and other methods – that do not include dormitories, he said.
Student housing is so low on colleges’ priority list that if a college has to choose between building an academic building, like a science center, or new dorms, most will choose an academic building that will enhance the college’s reputation, Lipman said.
A college is driven to create more housing when it gets pressure from students and communities, said Ronald E. Vestri, a partner at Steffian Bradley Assoc., a Boston architectural firm that specializes in academic housing.
Once colleges decide to construct more dorms, a lengthy and complex approval process and a lack of funding can make it tough to get such projects going, Vestri said.
Donors and benefactors often give money to colleges to build academic buildings or research labs but rarely donate to build student housing, Vestri said.
Complicating matters even more, cities and neighborhood groups often give mixed messages to colleges. While they tell college officials that more student housing is needed to free up rental units, some neighborhood groups oppose the very projects that would help alleviate the housing crisis.
Many neighborhood groups oppose more student housing because of the traffic it will create, and present major roadblocks during a public approval process that can take months.
“The thing that would make these projects move more smoothly is to have a more cooperative response from both the public officials and the community,” Vestri said.
What’s missing is a quick and easy process to get new student housing approved, he said.
Colleges must look at how their students currently affect the housing markets in Cambridge and the Greater Boston area, and need to make plans for more housing based on their future enrollment expectations, Vestri said.
Some colleges have already set ambitious goals to house more than 50 percent of their students on campus by a certain time, he said.
Vestri’s firm has designed dormitory projects currently in the works at LaSalle College in Newton, the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Sciences on Huntington Avenue in Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Vestri said the MIT project, which will house 750 graduate students, received quick approval and an overwhelmingly positive response from the community.
It took an unprecedented nine months to get approval – from the concept to the completion of construction documents – Vestri said. Typically the process takes 15 to 18 months.
Communication Major
The project approval came after MIT unsuccessfully struggled to get other housing projects going, he said. College officials decided to turn to a development and design team that could get the process moving a lot faster. The team consists of Steffian Bradley, John Moriarity Assoc. and Northland Development.
College officials also met with community groups to discuss the graduate housing before any public hearings took place.
Vestri said the approval process moved along quickly because the development team communicated well and addressed neighborhood concerns, while at the same time presenting a strong design concept.
Steffian Bradley architects have designed a 346,000-square-foot building that will combine studios with two-student units. The building, located at the corner of Pacific and Sidney streets in Cambridge, will include retail shops and restaurants and underground parking.
Construction started more than a month ago, and the dorm is expected to open next August.
MIT also has two other projects that promise to bring more students on campus. Robert Sales, MIT spokesman, said an Albany Street warehouse is being renovated to house 120 first-year graduate students. The renovated dorm will open in September.
And an undergraduate dorm, scheduled to open September 2002, will house 350 students. By 2002, all freshmen will be required to live on campus, he said.
Currently, approximately 2,700 undergraduates and 1,060 graduate students live on campus, Sales said. About 1,500 student live in independent living groups on and off campus – like sorority and fraternity houses, many of which are in Boston or along Memorial Drive in Cambridge.
Meanwhile, in Boston, city officials praise local schools for bringing more residential halls online.
The BRA’s Elsbree commended Northeastern for constructing attractive dorms.
Nevertheless, schools like Northeastern will continue to struggle to attract upperclassmen – who usually prefer to live on their own in the city – back to campus, she said.
Northeastern constructed its West Village residence halls along Ruggles and Parker streets in Roxbury — which house about 1,060 students — over the last two years. The university is planning to open Davenport Commons, a mixed housing facility on Columbus Street that will add 600 student beds, this fall.
It’s not just the big schools, like Boston and Northeastern universities, that are trying to get more students to live on campus.
Suffolk University and Emerson College are making their own attempts to build more housing.
At Emerson, college officials plan to build a 14-story dormitory and student center on a vacant Boylston Street lot across from Boston Common.
The college is selling its Back Bay properties and moving all facilities to its Campus on the Common along Boylston and Tremont streets near Boston Common, said Emerson Publicist Christopher Hennessy.
Elsbree praised Emerson for trying “to enliven an area that wasn’t seeing the revitalization” of other parts of the city.