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As UVM Plans To Sell Grad Student Housing, Some Students Feel Abandoned

Taylor Dobbs
/
VPR
The University of Vermont is planning to sell the 31 units that make up the Ethan Allen Apartments, including this building, to the Champlain Housing Trust.

The University of Vermont is planning to sell two groups of buildings that house graduate students, medical students and students with families. Officials at the university say the sales are in line with plans to centralize the campus, but some students feel like their housing is being sold out from under them with no ready replacement.

The housing is located in Fort Ethan Allen, one exit up Interstate 89 from the university. UVM officials won’t say how much it’s being sold for, citing ongoing negotiations.

The units house about 120 students, according to UVM’s dean of students, and it’s part of the university's housing stock known as Apartment and Family Housing, or AFH.

The Ethan Allen apartments, made up of 31 units, is set to be sold to the Champlain Housing Trust this fall. The 89-unit County Apartments are expected to be put on the open market later this year.

Gil Tansman is living in one of the Ethan Allen Apartments as he works towards his PhD at UVM, and he says he's one of the lucky students who got in.

"I think just by virtue of the fact that there is such strong demand for the housing at AFH and there is traditionally a fairly long waiting list to get those apartments just shows that there is a need," he says.

So Tansman was surprised and unsettled when he found out earlier this summer that the university is selling all of its housing in Fort Ethan Allen.

He says the university hasn't done much to reassure the residents that they'll have housing once the sale goes through.

"ResLife would essentially no longer be offering services to medical students and graduate students and students with families at all," he says. "So it's basically just kind of a disengagement."

Annie Stevens, the dean of students at UVM, says the university isn't just leaving students to figure out the housing situation.

"I don't think it's as harsh as that," she says. "I do think there's a team working right now, figuring out what are the options, how we can make this transition smoother."

Credit Taylor Dobbs / VPR
/
VPR
The University of Vermont plans to put the County Apartments, made up of 89 units, on the market later this year.

  Stevens says that even though the university's redevelopment of its central campus dormitory buildings is for undergraduate students, it will help free up options for others.

"So we're netting a good 300 beds in that project, which then really starts to alleviate some of the nearby housing," she says.

But not all housing is the same, and grad student Tansman says part of the reason the Fort Ethan Allen units are nice to have is that the students using them aren't as likely to fare well in the Burlington housing market.

Tansman said that market "provides very expensive and very, very poor quality housing that may be acceptable to undergraduates living as a group of roommates under one roof, but I don't think is appropriate for families."

Here too, Stevens disagrees.

"You know I think that might've been true maybe just a few years ago, but given the number of really good developments that are happening in the local area, I think there's going to be some really good options for them," she said.

Part of the problem officials have identified in Burlington's housing market is that supply hasn't kept up with demand, and the city of Burlington has been trying to get local colleges and universities to take pressure off that housing market, not add more students to the mix.

Stevens says that new pressure will be offset by the sold housing becoming publicly available.

"And so it really does open up more housing for community members," she says. "It's just a shift in where those community members are.'"

Stevens also says housing isn't the only thing to consider.

"There's larger issues here around the sale," she said. "Not just trying to make sure the students are doing well, but what other financial benefits might the university see in this - in the greater scheme of this."

Taylor was VPR's digital reporter from 2013 until 2017. After growing up in Vermont, he graduated with at BA in Journalism from Northeastern University in 2013.
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