Housing reaches full capacity, students turn to plan B

Photo by Stephanie Mason.

Alyssa Elso/Staff Writer

New and returning students arrived on-campus with their luggage and personal belongings, ready to settle into their dorms for the next few months, hoping to call campus their home.

With five residence halls and an apartment complex at Modesto Maidique Campus, and one Residence Hall at Biscayne Bay Campus, on-campus housing is full for the fall semester.

The Office of Housing and Residence Life received more than 4,000 housing agreements for the fall and spring semesters but only has 3,454 beds on campus, according to Interim Executive Director Lynn Hendricks.

The Office of Housing and Residential life does not stop accepting housing agreements, but they communicated to students that anyone who submitted an agreement after Aug. 1 would automatically be placed on a waitlist. As of Aug. 16 the waitlist had more than 200 students.

“It is likely that we will have students who do not show up during check-in and we will continue to assign students to spaces as we confirm these vacancies,” said Hendricks.

O’Brien Johnson, senior international relations major, knows first hand what being on a housing waitlist is like.

In his freshmen year, Johnson was given the choice of living at Bay Vista, the BBC residence hall, or waiting for a spot to open up at MMC. He chose the latter and it worked in his favor, he said.

“My freshmen year I was placed on a waitlist and two weeks after school had started a space opened up on-campus for me,” said Johnson. “I did not want to live at Bay Vista and commute to MMC, but for some students it is their only option.”

This semester, Housing saw an increase in the number of returning, transfer and graduate students seeking on-campus housing.

The newly constructed Parkview Hall at MMC, an upperclassmen residence hall, may be part of the reason students like Cartier Murrill, senior criminal justice major, are returning to on-campus housing.

“I have lived on-campus all three years, and now as a senior I got first choice in where I wanted to live,” said Murrill. “I am excited to move in and see what it looks like.”

Students not as fortunate as Murrill and Johnson in securing on-campus housing can remain on a wait list or seek off-campus housing.

The Office of Housing and Residential life has partnered with CORT, an external company that specializes in off-campus housing solutions, to ensure that students find an apartment or house close to campus.

“Even though housing is full, students should not be discouraged,” said Murrill. “The Office of Housing is pretty good at accommodating students and securing them a place to live.”

– alyssa.elso@fiusm.com