Student Housing Pressures Continue to Mount

College towns are a staple of the American identity. It seems that every state has a college town it reveres. These communities have unique identities that reflect both the geographical setting of the community and the characteristics of its university. Community identity is often shown most clearly in its downtown, and growing student populations often create planning challenges for these downtowns. Large student housing developments can infringe on downtown cohesion, displace businesses, increase congestion, and change the feel of the downtown core. In the face of these pressures, several college towns have enacted or considered moratoria on downtown apartment developments while considering solutions to solve student housing challenges. For example:

• Mansfield, home of the University of Connecticut, instated a nine-month moratorium on multi-family development while making updates to zoning regulations that align with town’s plan of conservation and development.
• East Lansing, home of Michigan State University, first placed a moratorium on multi-family developments with over four residential units and subsequently passed an ordinance that limits multi-family units to no more than four bedrooms downtown.
• Durham, home of the University of New Hampshire, is weighing a proposal that would prohibit multi-unit residential housing for non-related individuals in the central business district.

Clarion Associates has advised several college towns about potential responses to the challenges of student housing. The firm used creative regulations to ensure contextual development in their downtown districts. Outcomes from these discussions include the following:

• Columbia, MO, adopted an ordinance that limits the size of student housing development in downtown and nearby areas to a maximum of 200 bedrooms. The restriction applies if over 50 percent of the dwelling units in the structure has four or more bedrooms. To promote street engagement, the building must also include at least one entrance or exit for every 100 linear feet of street frontage.
• Columbia, SC, is discussing a new definition for “private dormitory.” This definition will cover apartment complexes that are not owned by a college or university, but contain bedrooms for students attending a college or university. Private dormitories cannot have more than 150 bedrooms per acre and cannot have more than three unrelated adults living together in certain zone districts.

Student housing in college community downtowns fill an important need, but large developments will continue to create planning challenges. As long as there is a demand, developers will continue to capitalize on student housing developments and economics currently favor the construction of large projects. Through zoning, college towns can limit the scale, size, insularity, and number of bedrooms in student complexes, limit how many unrelated people can live together (within constitutional bounds), and create incentives to protect their downtowns’ distinct identities.

Research by Mark Christensen, a Denver office intern and Masters in Urban and Regional Planning student at the University of Colorado at Denver.