Students Do Affect Oberlin’s Housing

To the Editor:

I would like to add to Richard Anderson’s (OC ’54) congratulations to Diana Roose and Daniel Gardner for their work in improving community-campus relations. Yet after four years of involvement in different aspects of Oberlin politics, including working in town, and building relationships with churches and community organizations, I believe we can do better. 
Studies of college/university towns and cities show certain trends such as higher poverty rates and poorer housing conditions than in their surrounding counties. 
The town of Oberlin suffers from a poverty rate that is 15 percent higher than in the surrounding county. This high poverty rate manifests itself in the problem of affordable and livable housing, an issue to which the College is directly linked. The poor housing conditions, specifically in the southeast quadrant of Oberlin, are a result of hundreds of students who live off campus each year. In one census block, 78 percent of houses are rentals. For many years, these houses have been substandard units rented to students by absentee landlords. As a result of the poor standards, most of these houses are now in unsatisfactory and dangerous condition. 
The Office of Campus-Community Relations includes in its overall plan an initiative to develop partnerships to improve housing in Oberlin. So far, the action taken on this issue was the purchase of the East Vine retirement home, which will be converted into student housing. Even though this may get students out of ‘firetrap’ houses, who is left living in these houses? Without a clear plan and the investment of substantial capital, these houses will remain substandard and continue to be an economic drain on the community. 
What can be done? Firstly, the College can acknowledge responsibility for the problem of a depleted, aging and under-capitalized housing stock and recognize that these conditions directly affect both the city and the college. Many of the people who live in these houses are low-paid College employees, some of whom are forced to move out of Oberlin because of the general lack of decent and affordable housing. 
There are not easy answers or solutions to these problems. But there are opportunities for the College to responsibly address these concerns in Oberlin. One example is to financially support the community’s purchase of John Mercer Langston’s house, an African-American Historical Landmark. 
The housing market, especially in the southeast quadrant, has been seriously affected by the hundreds of students living off campus. In order to restore a more normal and healthy housing stock and in turn a healthier community, we need to put financial resources into revitalizing the housing. This will be a benefit for students, College employees and the community at large. 

–Juliana Keen
College junior