By Ruben Palacios/Assistant News Director
For all of its illustrious beaches and nightclubs, Miami makes its residents pay, literally, when it comes to living in the city.
According to a New York Times article, Miami is one of the most expensive cities in the country to rent. On average, rent in Miami consumes 43 percent of a typical household income. Ideally for rent to be considered “affordable” it must fall within 30 percent of a household income.
FIU students opt to live in on-campus housing because living off campus is often too expensive.
For FIU students, the daunting rental rates of Miami ultimately dwindle their options when it comes to living in the area in which they are attending school. Some students struggle to find apartments worth living in while others have to rely on the University finding them a spot to live on campus.
Moses McGahee, a senior sociology major, has lived on campus since transferring to FIU in the Fall of 2012. He opted to live on campus because of the excessive renting prices around the University did not fit within his budget.
“The main reason why I’m living on campus is because I came from three hours away,” McGahee said. “I have yet been able to find a reasonable priced apartment here in Miami.”
Student Affairs, in an attempt to help students find a place to live, shared an ad recently via SGA-BBC with a number of websites with the focus of finding a residence. The sites listed in the ad were: Rent.com, Zillow.com, Apartments.com, Trulia.com and Classifieds.fiu.edu.
The attempt the University made to help students via its ad might seem small to some, but to others it shows that the school cares enough to reach out with a helping hand.
“It’s helpful because it shows that [the University] is actually concerned and that they are worried about the students’ well-being and they want them to live somewhere,” McGahee said.
The University has acknowledged how difficult and expensive it can be for a student to rent outside of school walls, and for the mean time, FIU students can only dream about leaving their dorms for a cozy apartment.
“[Living off campus] would be very easy for me to work with,” McGahee said “That’s most likely what I would have done from the start, if it was cheaper I would have gone with an apartment from the start.”
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