Student housing in Columbia might be coming to a crisis point if developers continue, [according to a recent analysis report](https://www.scribd.com/doc/241266801/University-of-Missouri-Columbia-Student-Housing-Analysis).
The report, authored by Brookside Marketing Director Sarah Backhaus, outlines the future of the student housing market and how MU’s enrollment could affect the existing and proposed developments in the future.
“(MU) could grow up to 38,000 and not create new student housing,” according to the report.
The reports are done from time to time and are used to determine whether or not to place more apartments within Columbia, Brookside spokesperson Jack Cardetti said.
“We’ve now decided not to put in student housing apartments, but to put in non-student apartments for young professionals and others,” Cardetti said.
No developer builds without having done research, Deputy City Manager Tony St. Romaine said.
“I think they all felt at the time they decided to move forward with their projects that Columbia’s student population was increasing and will continue to increase over the next few years,” St. Romaine said. “Right now, I believe the university is at about 35,000 enrollment, and I don’t think there’s any sign in the next few years that that will slow down very much.”
Developers from outside Columbia are not as concerned with the housing situation, Cardetti said.
“Frankly, we come at this from a slightly different angle,” Cardetti said. “Our developers are from Columbia, they live in Columbia. Our goal is to build nice developments and own them and manage them for decades to come. Some of these out-of-state developers are not as cognizant of the supply and demand issue because they don’t plan to be in the Columbia student housing market for a very long period of time.”
The report comes amid the ongoing struggle between some Columbia residents and City Council over a student housing development, the Opus Group project.
Opus was first discussed along with a few other complexes during the beginning of 2014. However, it was determined downtown infrastructure could not support new complexes as is, and council worked to find a solution.
In May, the council and a few developers, including Opus, came up with agreements to fund infrastructure issues in the downtown area. However, a petition began to circulate, backed by local attorney Jeremy Root, to repeal the Opus agreement, citing the problems with the infrastructure.
“The contributions that are being offered by the developer, in no one’s mind, including the city staff, are adequate to enable our infrastructure to support them completely,” Root said in an [April 2 Maneater article](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/2014/4/2/residents-petition-against-development-agreement/).
The petition did receive enough signatures, and City Council voted to repeal the agreement with Opus. However, repealing the agreement only took away the additional funding Opus would have given to the city to fund infrastructure developments, not stop the construction of the project, St. Romaine said.
“So now we do not have the pleasure of having the additional $450,000 to help with the city’s infrastructure in the downtown area,” St. Romaine said.
Now, Opus is facing litigation on the county and federal levels. However, construction of the project has started and is slated to be completed August 2015.
“I’m not surprised by the report,” Root said. “I don’t think anyone in Columbia would be surprised to hear we have a surplus of purpose-built student housing. We’re already starting to see degradation of projects that were developed in the last decade, and that’s unfortunate.”
There was an oversupply of 902 beds in fall 2013, according to the Moore and Shyrock Fall 2013 Vacancy Report. The Brookside report also points to an end date for MU’s growing enrollment, as numbers of 18-year-olds are expected to drop off both in the United States and Missouri, based off data from the Census Bureau.
Too many complexes can lead to many more issues than just empty beds, Cardetti said.
“We already saw other student housing complexes offering ‘name your own price’ and others,” he said. “It can lead to issues such as higher crime and other problems when you have abandoned property in an oversupplied market.”
The issue with student housing may stem from MU itself, St. Romaine said.
“The university is not building any new dorm housing to accommodate new students, so there certainly is a demand there,” he said.
MU is currently constructing a new residence hall, Virginia Avenue South Housing, which will have 331 beds. The two residence halls planned to replace Jones, Laws and Lathrop halls will add 350 additional beds.
Cardetti said the growth at MU will not come from undergraduate students.
“We think that the university will grow, but we think a lot of that growth will be among graduate students, among online students and then to a lesser extent with on-campus undergraduate students, who really purpose-based student housing is made for,” Cardetti said.
The student housing market is not a city government issue, St. Romaine said.
“We just want to make sure the zoning is appropriate for the private development, and they have the necessary utilities and infrastructure to support them,” he said. “We try to stay out of determining how many beds are needed in the downtown area and leave that to private enterprise to figure out.”
Anyone involved should be keeping their eyes open and paying attention to what could happen in the future, Cardetti said.
“It’s just an issue that all policymakers at the local level here need to keep an eye on because there are certainly drastic effects when you see oversupply in student housing in a market,” he said. “That’s just not healthy for the local community.”
