For the first three weeks of the semester, 20-year-old Brandi Lucero has lived like a tourist with free trolley rides to downtown and all the cable TV she can watch between classes.
Her temporary dorm has been Spanish Trails Inn & Suites at 3141 Main Ave., where the Fort Lewis College student has been renting a room with a kitchenette by the week.
In Durango, where affordable housing can be hard to come by, college students often must resort to staying at an inn.
There is pressure for her to find a place soon because the weekly rate at Spanish Trails starts at $214 for a single bed, but students and their parents typically don’t know what else to do.
“I can’t tell you how many students I’ve gotten at the last minute, just unbelievably shocked they can’t find housing here,” said Jan Hiemer, manager of Spanish Trails. “I’ve talked with a lot of parents. They’re desperate. They don’t know what to do.”
Lucero said she and her mother were “freaking out, too.”
“In the worst-case scenario, I thought I was going to be homeless,” Lucero said.
Some football players at FLC also found temporary quarters at Spanish Trails before they could move into an apartment, Hiemer said.
A few years ago, a veteran in his mid-20s spent the entire school year in a Spanish Trails apartment suite.
Some studious students prefer motel accommodations.
“A lot of students don’t want to be in the party atmosphere. They’re students. They want quiet,” Hiemer said.
But motel students typically have started their housing search too late to find something by the time school starts, unaware that late July is considered “last minute” in Durango, Hiemer said.
The supply of available apartments is limited even in the summer because renters will hold onto their units by paying rent over the summer even if they leave town, Hiemer said.
Because Lucero worked over the summer in her hometown of Albuquerque, she found it difficult to look for a place for the fall semester.
Lucero lived on campus the last couple of years, but wanted to go off campus this year because she thought it would be more affordable.
Because she will soon be moving into an apartment at $800 a month, which she will split with a roommate, Lucero thinks she made the right decision.
To live on campus ranges between $600 and $800 a month with campus apartments the more expensive option, said Mitch Davis, spokesman for FLC.
“It’s still pretty affordable for Durango,” Davis said. “It’s hard to say it’s more affordable (than off campus) because a student may find a way to pack three or four people into a two-bedroom or less apartment.”
On-campus housing is currently at 97 percent capacity with 1,526 students.
Because the demand for campus housing was so high during the summer, the college had considered opening one dorm that was suppose to close this semester for renovations. Once “things settled down,” FLC decided to go ahead with the renovations.
“We haven’t had more demand than we can handle on campus so far as student housing goes,” Davis said.
Davis emphasized that motel living is self-imposed exile.
“We still have beds on campus for FLC students. Oftentimes they just don’t want to live on campus. They want to live downtown and are willing to stick it out for a week or two until they find something,” Davis said.
Davis said FLC has a maximum capacity to house about 40 percent of its students on campus.
During the 2009-10 school year, FLC housed 37 percent of its undergraduates, which compares to 19 percent for Western State, 23 percent for Mesa State and 26 percent for Colorado State, according to a state study.
“In reality, our capacity is high when compared with other institutions in the state,” Davis said.
The college requires freshmen to live on campus unless they can get a waiver. About 60 percent of the students who live on campus are freshmen.
Finding a room off campus can be a harsh dose of reality.
Unlike many cities, Durango does not have a habitability code, which imposes building codes for new construction, said Greg Hoch, director of community development.
The number of unrelated people allowed to live in the same house is also unusually high at five because most cities limit the number of unrelated people to three or four, Hoch said.
Trying to impose a habitability code or to lower the number of unrelated people living in the same place would be politically difficult.
“Getting between people and their money is the biggest challenge of all,” Hoch said.
While a common complaint is the traffic and noise coming from houses overloaded with student renters, Hoch said changing housing rules would come with consequences.
“I think for the city to change its definition of a family from five to three unrelated people, it would precipitate a major crisis for college students living in this community,” Hoch said at a recent forum.
“Unless there is a backup plan to provide them housing on campus, it is probably not a good course to take at this time,” he said.
Politically speaking, Hoch also thought “it would be very difficult to convince the state legislature to put more money into college housing on campus because you would be hard pressed to find a majority of students who want to live on campus.”
Ironically, in her search for housing, Lucero looked at apartments that were converted motels.
She could not believe what they were asking in rent.
“It was in terrible shape, very ratty,” Lucero said. “I couldn’t believe they wanted $700 for that place. It didn’t even have the necessities. It came with a kitchen, but I would have been surviving off microwave food.”
jhaug@durangoherald.com
