“Olympia’s housing market is an inconvenient truth that the Evergreen administration has to face. Evergreen wants to enroll more students, but where are they supposed to live?”
Grace McClarty in ‘Collecting Data on Evergreen’s Housing Crisis,’ published in the October 2023 CPJ
Undergraduate Capstone Researchers Grace McClarty and Jaina Nehm conducted a housing survey of Evergreen Students, on-campus and off-campus, in a 19-day period between October and November. Building on years of research into the conditions of housing access, insecurity, and crisis in both Olympia and campus-specific realms, the survey sought to collect an up-to-date data set on how students are dealing with this housing crisis.
Findings from the limited 112-response sample revealed patterns of barriers to renting in the current market (such as low vacancy rates, rejection of cosigners, a 30% increase in Olympia rent costs since 2021), significant rent burden (meaning more than 30% of monthly income is spent on housing costs) poor quality of campus accommodations, consciousness of poor working conditions at RAD, and housing/food insecurity. These patterns are understood as significant barriers to learning and success at Evergreen.
Significantly, in their “other key findings” section, the authors report:
The majority of off-campus students do not feel supported by Evergreen when it comes to housing. Both on and off campus respondents wish that Evergreen provided more resources about off-campus housing. Students have many ideas for how to improve the state of housing both on and off campus, and they want to be listened to and included in decisions and discussions.
After a list of 20 concrete recommendations for Evergreen administration to support their students in the face of housing crisis– ranging from as easily achievable as forming a coalition of students, faculty, staff, and administrators that would work together on student housing issues, to more long term initiatives like partnering with the state to fund off-campus student housing projects, such as student housing cooperatives– the authors conclude with this statement:
Students deserve safe, stable, and affordable housing, and our conclusion is a plea. A plea for the administration to conduct institution-wide research into the student housing crisis. A plea to include students in discussions and decisions about housing. A plea to take students seriously. A plea to make student housing a priority. Ignoring these pleas comes at a terrible cost.
The CPJ hopes to provide a more thorough overview of this survey in the next issue.
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