More dorms? More land? Students squeezed out of FAU housing pay high rents off campus

BOCA RATON — When Florida Atlantic University junior Jaclyn Magill checked the waiting list for on-campus housing in early March, she lost hope.

Number 460.

“If I didn't find housing, I was being sent back to Jersey,” Magill said, explaining she didn't think she could afford the surrounding apartment costs in Boca Raton. “And I did not want to be there because I love Florida now.”

Magill’s hometown is in Essex County, about an hour from New York City. But since attending FAU, she’d fallen in love with Palm Beach County, she said.

Realizing the chances of getting off the waiting list were slim, Magill, 20, began a search of her own and luckily, she found the perfect situation.

It led her to the apartment of a friend who was about to move out. Magill took her room and moved in with two other students Aug. 9 — one a junior and the other a sophomore who couldn’t find housing because she’d transferred.

How expensive is it to live off campus at FAU?

The average monthly cost of living in Boca Raton is $3,266 for one person, per real estate brokerage UpHomes. This places the city in the top 0.1% of the world's most expensive cities.

Magill pays $1,400 per month for the bedroom in her apartment. Her roommate who occupies the master bedroom pays $1,800.

For other upperclassmen, though, the results have not been as fortunate.

Abby Powell, also a junior now, found herself in the 600s as a sophomore on the waiting list for the on-campus apartments designated for her class along with many of her friends.

“Everyone started freaking out, pretty much,” said Powell, 20. “Right after that was when we got on Zillow and apartments.com and just started looking.”

But with rent hikes and homeowner association fees and restrictions in Boca Raton, Powell’s family thought a Realtor might be the only solution. In stepped Michael Ulrich, a Realtor with Compass Inc.

With Powell out of town for a summer internship in Cape Cod, Massachusetts — which would later help her start funding her new place off campus — Ulrich was the help she needed, she said. Because she and her roommates were out of town, he found potential options and was able to tour them.

"Unfortunately, with college students, there's a stigma," Ulrich said. "Like, 'Oh, they'll party or they're going to trash the place.' However, that's obviously not the case. It might be for some, but I can assure everyone that I've worked with is reputable."

The women ended up in a three-story townhouse about four minutes from the school. Its total cost per month is $3,500. Powell, whose room is the largest, pays $1,300 per month, not including electricity costs.

Housing on campus for upperclassmen residence halls costs $3,365 for a shared double suite, which contains two bedrooms, and $4,600 for a single suite, which contains four bedrooms, per semester. Meal plans are required to live on campus, but are not included in these prices.

If divided by the roughly four months that make up a semester, this would mean one month of rent to live in a dorm would cost between $840 and $1,150 per month.

On-campus apartments range from $3,100 for a shared-studio double to $5,480 for a two-bedroom single suite — both of which house two students — per semester.

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Like Magill, Powell believes the reason she and so many of her friends were pushed to live off campus in the first place was because of the school’s larger incoming class of 4,300 students. Florida Atlantic's undergraduate enrollment in 2021 was 24,861 for its 850-acre campus. According to U.S. News and World Report, the school's acceptance rate is 78%, but that figure is expected to fall.

The 4,300-member incoming freshman class is among the largest in FAU history and comes months after the school's national profile rocketed to stardom after the successful March Madness run of its men's basketball team.

The school, which opened in 1964, has seen rapid growth and has branches at seven campuses across Palm Beach and Broward counties, but the main one in Boca Raton houses only around 4,600 students in nine apartment and suite-style residence halls, according to its website.

According to the university's Housing and Residential Education department, nearly 75% of student residents renewed housing contracts for the fall of 2023. Traditionally, that number has been closer to 55%, Housing and Residential Education Director Catherine Kellman-Pitan said.

"Looking at our surrounding areas, Boca Raton does not have a large apartment complex area for university-age students," Kellman-Pitan said about the increase in renewed contracts. "When you look at other universities, their surrounding areas do have apartment styles that are catering to that population."

She also attributed the increase to rent prices rising after the pandemic.

The waiting list, which Powell and Magill were placed on, arranges students based on priority groups, Kellman-Pitan said. The groups are organized by year of entry to the university. The first priority group was first-year students, the second was students who started during 2021, the third was students who started in 2020 and the final group was graduate students.

The list, which started at around 1,000, was down to less than 500 students by fall move-in, Kellman-Pitan said. Currently, there are 4,765 students living on campus. Of those, 2,212 students are upperclassmen.

Many FAU students have to get jobs to help pay for off-campus rent

Securing housing was just the half of it for Magill and Powell.

Paying rent for the new off-campus lodging they’d secured meant finding, or returning to, jobs in the area.

For Magill and Powell, that means hostess positions at the local seafood restaurant Atlantic Grille. There, they greet guests, seat them, answer the phone and take reservations. The position takes up about 23 hours of Magill’s week. She dedicates three days of her week to work only, and the rest to classes and time at school.

“I feel like work is my break,” said Magill, who studies business marketing.

Before returning to school, she had to take out a loan because the job alone doesn’t cover all of her school and housing costs. And every month, she sets aside money to send her parents to save up to repay that loan when she graduates.

“They do their best to help me financially,” Magill said. “But they can only do so much.”

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Powell, Magill’s co-hostess and friend, spends around 25 to 30 hours per week at the Atlantic Grille.

“I made my class schedule, pretty much, around days I could work,” she said.

Powell worked at the restaurant last year, too, but her shifts would fall on the days she had class and she found it to be too much, she said.

Powell’s major is business management with a focus in entrepreneurship. Though she lived on campus her first two years, she started working her freshman year to have spending money when she was with her friends.

“Now, I’m working to pay to live where I go to school,” she said. “And then, hopefully, have some money to go out with my friends. I don't even have days where I can anymore because I'm always working or in school.”

The domino effect: High rent, more time on the job, less time to study

Powell said she tries not to think about it too much. But for some other students in similar positions, the thought doesn’t go away.

Hannah, a senior who did not want to disclose her last name, will have to spend an extra semester in school as a result of being placed on probation when her grades tanked because she was working.

She’d made an agreement with her parents that she’d cover rent on her own.

“But I didn’t realize how expensive it would be,” she said. “Even regardless of your preferences, everything's going to be around $900 to $1,300 per person.”

Hannah, 21, has lived off campus since her sophomore year. She had started looking for off-campus options because she thought they'd be easier to live in than those on campus.

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"They might have had housing, but there has always been a problem with wait-listing and not getting the greatest of rooms or just problems with it overall," she said. "I just thought it'd be easier to just go right off campus. That really smacked me in the face."

Hannah originally is from Chicago, but her family relocated to St. Augustine, so she pays in-state tuition. Powell, who hails from Fort Myers, does, too. In-state undergraduate students living off campus can expect to pay a total cost of $34,602 for the nine-month school year, according to the university's website. For non-Florida residents like Magill, total off-campus costs are estimated to be $48,978.

What are the solutions? More dorms? More land?

The school has been looking for solutions, but has come up empty in recent years.

In 2021, the Boca Raton City Council rejected a proposal for a four-story apartment complex designed to feature a pedestrian bridge that would have connected it to FAU.

With Mayor Scott Singer and former Deputy Mayor Andrea Levine O’Rourke opposed to the project, “Liv on 5th” failed to obtain the four votes needed to pass.

The four-story, 546-bed apartment complex, positioned across the street from FAU, was in part intended to serve the university's growing student population.

“FAU has a housing problem — there’s no question — and it bleeds over to the city,” O’Rourke said. “Is it our responsibility? I’m not sure."

"Liv on 5th" was planned for Northwest Fifth Avenue, near the multifamily housing development Windwood. Many residents cited traffic, safety and noise concerns, but students disagreed.

“I think we’ve got to consider that FAU is shedding its long-attached stigma as a commuter school,” said Ryan Rossi, a Boca Raton resident and FAU alum.

Later in 2021, the school opened Atlantic Park Towers, a new dormitory that houses more than 600 students at Northwest 20th Street at the east end of campus.

Most of the students who moved in there had been housed at the Fairfield Inn Suites on Glades Road.

FAU also added a residence hall for 150 students at the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College in Jupiter after housing 20 students at the nearby Courtyard by Marriott during the same period.

The city is starting to feel the pressure of the growing population at FAU and the amount of housing devoted to students. That, coupled with the rising cost in rent, has not sat well with current students.

"I just kind of hope it doesn't drown me this semester," Powell said about her work-study situation. "I don't think it will. I hope it won't. But there's really no saying."

Jasmine Fernández is a journalist covering Delray Beach and Boca Raton at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at jfernandez@pbpost.com. Help support our work. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: FAU housing problem: Students squeezed off campus pay high Boca rents