ITHACA, N.Y. — In JoAnn Cornish’s view, Ithaca wouldn’t be Ithaca without its students.
But, she admits, balancing the needs of Ithaca’s student population and its permanent residents is “a puzzle.”
Part of that challenge, said Cornish, the city’s Director of Economic Development and Planning, is because Cornell students are playing an outsized role in driving the city’s affordable housing crisis.
Ithaca College, a decidedly residential college, houses just under seventy-five percent of its 6,000 students on-campus. Over half of Cornell’s about 14,000 undergraduates, on the other hand, live off-campus.
“Undergraduate housing drives the cost of housing up so much,” she said. “We know through Cornell’s recent housing study that there are many students who would like to live on campus, but there isn’t that housing stock there, so they have to look into the community.”
Citing Cornell Provost Michael Kotlikoff, a Cornell news release said in November that the university is at “maximum capacity” for housing students on-campus. This lack of housing on-campus drives students off-campus, into Collegetown and throughout East Hill.
That excess demand is partially why Collegetown has, on average, the highest rents in Ithaca. Many students are willing and able to pay those rents, either through readily-available student loans or by having their parents foot the bill. So why would a landlord lower the rent?
Some students, like Omar Elfeky, a junior majoring in environmental engineering, have rents of almost $2,000 per month. He lives in the 312 College Ave apartment complex, which is described on its website as “among Cornell’s most modern off-campus apartments.”
His studio apartment is snug, colorfully decorated, and complete with a kitchenette and his own bathroom. He has access to fitness centers, he’s close to campus, and the building appeared nearly spotless. Is it worth it?
“I honestly don’t think this is reasonably priced based on the space they give me,” he told me last month during an interview in his apartment. He believes that a monthly rent of $1,200 to $1,400 would be more appropriate, but he said that “there is a premium to these apartments, to make them at a level of exclusivity they’re trying to achieve.”
When he transferred to Cornell from the University of Houston, it was already too late to seek on-campus housing, “which looked shoddy anyways,” he said.
So he decided to search in Collegetown in order to be close to campus. He found another apartment, right around the corner on Dryden Avenue, but he said that building had a number of problems: the elevator didn’t work, it smelled bad, the carpets were dirty.
“Am I going to live in worse conditions because of the premiums?” Elfeky asked. “I don’t think so.”
The quality of housing in Ithaca simply does not match the price of housing, said Ken Danter, who last year authored a study commissioned by the Downtown Ithaca Alliance on the downtown housing market.
That report shows that college students “dominate” about half of the apartment market in the city. “Because of this fact, as well as the fact that the market is 98.5% occupied,” the report goes on to say, “the rents in the Ithaca area are much higher than rents in similar markets and are out of reach for many renters in the Ithaca area.”
A couple floors below Elfeky lives Radhika Gupta, a junior from Long Island who studies industrial and labor relations.
Last year, she lived in a house on Stewart Avenue, where the rent was about $600 per month. “My mom hated it,” she said. “We had stink bugs, and my landlord wouldn’t get rid of them.”
“It was the worst housing I’ve lived in in my life,” said Gupta who, admittedly, has an aversion to insects.
But she said that her parents like her new apartment—the cost of which hovers around $1,300 per month—which she shares with two friends. The complex’s closeness to campus, access to the building’s movie theater, and the convenience of not having to undergo yet another Collegetown housing search are all reasons she’s decided to renew her lease for senior year.
Gupta said that she rarely thinks about the rent, which is covered by her parents, but said that it is probably too expensive for upstate New York. “If we were in New York City, it would be a great price,” she explained, “But I feel that the fact that we are in Ithaca, that they’re charging that, it’s kind of expensive … I expected it to be cheaper, housing-wise.”
“Most people I know here can afford things, like living in Collegetown, without complaining too much,” she explained. “There’s complaining, obviously, but it’s never ‘I can’t afford it,’ it’s ‘Why is it so expensive?’”
She knows about the affordable housing crisis in Ithaca—that the high rents paid in Collegetown can and do adversely impact year-round Ithaca residents.
“From what I’ve heard, a lot of Ithaca residents have a lot of trouble living here,” she said.
So, does she think that a permanent resident might feel a sense of disdain towards Cornell students, who are, in part, pricing them out of their city?
She paused for a few seconds. “I have never even thought about that.”