College students tend to live on a shoestring budget, and Fort Lewis College students are no different, with many of them, wishing there were more affordable housing options both on campus and off.
Haydn Collard, a student senator in the college’s student governing body, is a senior at FLC this year and has lived for the past four years in Durango where it is notoriously expensive for many students. Collard said he wishes more attention was paid to the limited housing choices available to students such as him.
Students generally aim to pay $500 per month off campus, which is average, Collard said.
“That can be steep for someone who is working and going to school, but I’d say that’s the norm,” he said. “Most shoot for the grid, because it’s affordable but competitive. Otherwise, they’re usually stuck with apartments.”
The majority of students The Durango Herald spoke with agree that living with roommates on the grid, the area near Main Avenue, is preferable and a $500 monthly rent per tenant is a deal, or at least typical. Collard’s own Seventh Avenue rental is shared with roommates.
But some students are getting innovative with housing, either doubling up in bedrooms or living in alternative dwelling units, or a unit secondary to a property’s main dwelling. These can be sheds, garages or other units that don’t necessarily meet code regulations.
“In my experience, I don’t know too many landlords that register them,” Collard said.
Cruz Nuniz, an FLC student from Santa Fe, lives on Fourth Avenue with three roommates. Two are sharing a room to cut the cost of rent, which totals about $1,400 a month, including utilities.
A sophomore at FLC, Cruz is glad to have left on-campus housing, which is required of students for their first two semesters. That put a dent in his pocket, Cruz said.
Fort Lewis is making an effort to make on-campus housing more available. According to a June 2015 report released by the Regional Housing Alliance of La Plata County, on-campus housing capacity is 1,540 beds. The 20-year Fort Lewis College housing master plan aims to increase capacity to 1,700 beds. But it’s not necessarily affordable to everyone.
On the low end, a double occupancy room costs a student $2,265 per semester this school year, excluding board. Others, including family housing apartments, can cost as much as $3,990 per semester.
The livability and cost of an off-campus house can be a toss-up, but a Durango apartment can be less convenient in terms of proximity to the school and affordability. This fall, an affordable housing complex opened to tenants with one-bedroom units running at about $380 per month, but it is located off 32nd Street, not a quick walk for students.
Prior to the grid, Nuniz had found an affordable apartment in Hermosa at $700 a month, split between him and a roommate, but the apartment was small.
“I would say unless you have a group you’re comfortable with living in close proximity, it’s hard to find something, especially for those of us who are, for lack of a better term, I guess financially separated from our parents and have to work,” he said. “We pay bills from money saved from summer jobs.”
Learning to live on a tight budget is the norm for many college students. But high rent can be painful when paired with loans. Thus far, Nuniz has accrued about $30,000 in loans since he began his freshman year.
“The millennial generation is having to stretch their dollars more than previous generations,” said Karen Iverson, executive director of the Regional Housing Alliance of La Plata County. “They have the high amounts of student loan debt and are delaying home ownership. Undoubtedly, the tight rental and home ownership market make it difficult for the entry-level workforce to find housing, including recent graduates.”
Local real estate agents say many parents purchase a condo or apartment for their kids during school, but FLC students don’t stick around Durango after graduating, though many return years later.
“We do get contacted, especially from parents considering purchasing properties for their students to live in while in college,” Don Ricedorff with The Wells Group said. “We get those calls every year, especially as we near the semester beginning or ending. When they graduate, a lot go out to the real world, so to speak, and come back later when they can afford to.”
Ricedorff estimated his company averages about three sales a year by parents setting up living quarters for their students.
“We have parents come in and buy a condo, and when their kids finish, they sell it,” Caver and Associates agent Tom Caver said. “In that sense, FLC affects the market.”
Gina Piccoli with Coldwell Banker Heritage House Realtors said she can’t quantify students who do this but said there is a large influx of students that return to Durango several years after graduation, once they’ve made money elsewhere.
Nuniz said it’s hard to say what needs to change, but he places more fault with the college than with the city and county’s development of affordable housing options.
“I understand very much that Durango is a historic hub for tourism, and much of its money comes from milking the pockets of tourists, and that translates to housing,” he said. “For students, it’s not so much what Durango can do for us, but what the college could do. It’s expensive to live in dorms.”
jpace@durangoherald.com
