As colleges struggle with housing crises, study reveals growing concerns over the University of Delaware’s approach

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This story was supported by a statehouse coverage grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Across the country, universities are grappling with a worsening student housing crisis. Rising rents, limited on-campus accommodations and increasing enrollment have left many students struggling to secure affordable housing.

In Boston, nearly 70% of students at Boston University and Northeastern live off-campus, often competing with long-term city residents for space. In California, the University of California system has faced lawsuits over housing shortages. A national survey from Temple University’s Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice found that 43% of students at four-year institutions experience housing insecurity, with many struggling to afford rent, living in overcrowded conditions, or moving in with others due to financial constraints.

The University of Delaware is no exception. With a growing student population and an increasing reliance on off-campus housing, many students — particularly graduate students — are facing mounting financial pressures.

A study conducted in 2024 by Abdulrasheed Dawodu, a UD alumnus, examined the struggles of African graduate students at the university. The findings revealed that over 80% of respondents spend more than 30% of their income on housing, while 46% pay more than half of their income on rent. That makes them what HUD classifies as “extremely cost-burdened.”

“That’s quite alarming,” Dawodu said. “We need to understand some of the peculiarities about the African students. One, they are limited by the number of hours they could work. Based on their contract, they could only work on campus and they could only work 20 hours a week on campus.”

But the issue isn’t new. Housing constraints at UD have been decades in the making.

UD’s housing problem did not start overnight

There was a time when finding a dorm at UD wasn’t as difficult as it is today. In the 1950s, the university built enough dormitories to house 60% of its undergraduate students. However, between 1972 and 1991, no new dorms were constructed, even as enrollment increased. Today, only 38% of undergraduates live on campus, leaving thousands to find housing in Newark’s increasingly competitive rental market.

“The school had a policy of not building additional on-campus housing for students,” Dawodu said. “The policy was just to only rehabilitate what was available, and what was available could only house about 38% of even the undergraduate students.”

The university’s decision to reduce its on-campus housing stock by 1,900 beds in recent years has further compounded the issue. One of the most notable losses was Christiana Towers, a high-rise complex that once housed hundreds of students.

“The apartment [complex] was being considered to be used as, I think they wanted to make it like a garden. That’s good from an environmental standpoint,” Dawodu said. “If the school is not expanding, and the available [dorm buildings] get demolished and used for something else without actually replacing [them], to me, I think that’s not the most efficient strategy at that time given the fact that housing is insufficient for the students.”

Christiana Towers has remained vacant since its closure in 2019. Some students and alumni argue that repurposing the complex into affordable housing could help alleviate the student housing crunch.

UD officials say the towers are no longer viable for student living and will be demolished in the near future.

“We are moving towards demolition of those buildings. They will come down,” José-Luis Riera, UD’s Vice President for Student Life, confirmed. “We really assess that the buildings could no longer provide the high-quality experience … that we want all of our residence halls to have.”

“We are identifying what sites exist on campus for new residential projects,” he said. “That’s certainly potentially one of them, but we haven’t gotten as far as conceptualizing what that project might look like at this point.”

The lack of a concrete replacement plan has left some students wondering whether UD’s housing strategy is keeping pace with student needs.

UD’s Response: balancing housing and institutional goals

Riera acknowledged that housing remains an ongoing challenge but emphasized that the university considers it more than just a logistical issue — it is tied to student success.

“When we think about housing, we’re thinking about it as much more than a place where somebody lays their head,” Riera said. “Our students that live in our residence halls tend to persist and be retained at higher rates. They graduate at higher rates. They typically actually have higher GPAs on average than those that don’t.”

Despite the university’s awareness of the issue, UD has chosen to renovate existing dormitories rather than expand housing capacity. Riera explained that UD must also consider its relationship with the City of Newark, where private landlords and student housing developments play a significant economic role.

“Honestly, the Newark economy is supported in a large part by all of our off-campus developments,” he said. “So we’re not going to go and build housing and undermine … as a city and a university, we work together to support the economic viability of both entities.”

“We definitely don’t think we’re against building residence halls…, a lot of our buildings obviously need investment and we’re constantly assessing and doing that,” he added. “What you’ll see more is we’ll build new to replace old beds than necessarily we’re building to expand our inventory. Now, there’s some caveats to that with populations. I do think in the next whatever number of years, you’re going to see us investing more in grad housing.”

UD has introduced limited on-campus housing options for graduate students, though spaces remain scarce.

“For three years now, we have offered an on-campus housing option, and we have grown that number of beds for grad students every year,” Riera said. “We started with a pilot two years ago, actually in a community-based apartment building on Main Street, but then moved that last year as a pilot on campus and did that again. So we’re housing about 60 to 70 graduate students’ [housing] through that mechanism. It is specifically one-year transitional housing.”

However, as rents in Newark continue to rise, some students wonder if UD’s housing policies are doing enough to address the crisis.

Dawodu believes UD could do more to proactively address the housing crisis. He points to schools like the University of Michigan, which offers dedicated housing for international students to help them transition smoothly.

“Even if they’re just for the first semester, at least get settled. Then after some months we can now get proper housing,” Dawodu said.

His recommendations for UD include expanding on-campus housing to meet increasing demand, exploring alternative housing solutions, such as modular construction or 3D-printed housing, repurposing vacant properties into temporary student housing, and revisiting zoning policies to ensure more affordable housing near campus.

For now, students must navigate an increasingly difficult housing market, where rents continue to climb, competition remains fierce, and university policies remain largely unchanged.