Housing Crisis: Oberlin's battle for affordable housing

Reese Hyatt: During the recent recession, the cost of living has skyrocketed. While the price
of housing has increased, wages have been slow to catch up. This situation has greatly
impacted the small college town of Oberlin, Ohio.
Izzy Braun: I'm Izzy.
Hyatt: I'm Reese.
Lucy Jiang: I'm Lucy.
Talia Schwartz: And I'm Talia.
Hyatt: And this is: Housing Crisis, Oberlin's battle for affordable housing.
Schwartz: Oberlin College, a popular liberal arts college, which attracts about 3,000 students
to the town per year, serves as a major factor affecting housing prices in the small towns
surrounding it. Although students are required to live on campus until their fourth year,
students who have six or more semesters in residence are eligible to apply for off campus
housing.
Many fourth year college students choose to live off campus to find cheaper housing, as the
current on campus housing cost is $9,398 per school year for 2023-24, while the average cost
of renting a low cost apartment is $650-800 per month. Besides the fact that students are
trying to find cheaper housing, the college has also been buying up the local low cost
housing, which is also a big reason that there's a lack of affordable housing in town,
according to a local landlord.
Braun: On top of that, the average listing price for a home in Oberlin on Realtor.com is
$282,500, which breaks down to about $56,500 down and then about $1,400 a month. This is
generally affordable as the median annual income of an Oberlin resident is $62,696 according
to the 2020 U.S. Census. However, 22.7 percent of the population lives below the poverty
line, meaning that they earn $30,000 a year or less, making that $282,500 price grossly
unaffordable.
Jiang: We reached out to Oberlin City Council member Michael McFarlin for his thoughts on
the Oberlin housing crisis. This is what he had to say.
Michael McFarlin: Well the bottom line is because of the demand. The good thing is that
Oberlin is a desirable place to live, so people want to be here.
It's a livable city. And that creates demand and creates a little bit of pressure on prices,
moving them upwards. You have the college that has some students who want to live off
campus, the college that brings in staff and their families, and faculty and their families, and
they would like a place to live in town.

Enrollment has gone up at the college. So there's a little bit of pressure coming from the
college side. I think another piece is that the city hasn't really kept up with the need for new
housing. A lot of the houses in the neighborhoods in Oberlin are older and not as desirable as
maybe some new developments outside of the city. So maybe people see that is not where
they want to go or it's too costly to renovate in town.
Here in Oberlin, this last council, we have done a few things to try and fix it. We have
several vacant lots around the city. We have teamed up with the Oberlin land trust and
donated two properties to them and through their own financing, they're going to build a
couple of homes in the next year or two, that will be affordable and they will be forever
affordable by deed. Hopefully, that goes well and we can find ways to, find some other land,
to expand that program.
Schwartz: We also talked to Oberlin City Council member, Eboni Johnson, who also
commented on the issue. Do you feel like there's an affordable housing crisis?
Eboni Johnson: Absolutely. And I am also finding out that it's not just unique to Oberlin. I
recently was at a nationwide conference for elected officials from all over the country. And
everybody is facing housing crises in their towns. We have actually some things kind of in
early stages, but in progress. I think, too, with the college building a new dorm, I think that
would help.
Schwartz: Yeah, what impact do you think that the college has on the town, in terms of
housing?
Johnson: It's huge, right? So, the more students are granted off campus privileges, the fewer
houses are available for other non-student people to live in. And that includes faculty, visiting
faculty, regular tenure track faculty, people who are not affiliated with the college.
I heard a story from a friend of mine, this was several years ago, but I think it's still relevant,
she was coming back to Oberlin, and property owners who had places to rent didn't want to
rent out a whole house to her and her family, because they'd rather rent by the room to
students because, in my view, they can make more money that way, renting by the room, than
renting the whole house. She ultimately did find a place, but it's things like that, that kind of
take housing stock off the market for people.
I know a family who lived next door to me. They were renting their home. And for reasons
that I don't know, the homeowner wanted to sell the house. They wanted to stay in Oberlin.
Guess what? They couldn't find anything that was appropriate for their family size, or their
income, or maybe both, I don't know.
But they ended up leaving and going to Lorain, where I think they are happy. But I do know
that they originally wanted to stay in town and couldn't do it. And so I don't know how many
other stories there are like that, of people who want to come here or want to stay here and just
can't.

We can only do what we can do. But if we don't do anything, it won't get any better, right?
And so I feel confident that the current city council and the incoming city council for next
term are on the same page as far as making good progress on that. And so this is where it's
really important to have a good partnership between the city and the college.
And be able to work together to make some really amazing things happen. And if you look at
the history of the college and the city, we were born together, we grew up together. The
college has to keep the city's best interests in mind. But it goes the other way, too. The city
has to consider the college to some degree in the policies that it makes.
Because they are our largest employer in the city, right? And so I want us to keep making
good progress on all those fronts that make Oberlin a place that people want to be.
Hyatt: Oberlin College is currently in the process of building a new dorm that will phase out
most off campus housing in about five to six years except for extenuating circumstances such
as students who are married or have children, commuter students, and those older than 23.
Braun: According to townspeople Sarah Humphreys and Krista Long, the new dorm is a
very positive development for people who want to live in Oberlin. Humphreys has recently
moved into an apartment with her partner.
Sarah Humphreys: Yeah, it was very hard to find a rental moving back to the community,
and I had a relationship with someone that was already here, and he was on the ground for
two years looking for a rental. Found it sort of in the last year before I joined him out here.
He applied to many different housing, filled out applications, paid application fees, and
would often never hear back from people, or there were just so many applicants that can't
make the cut.
Braun: And according to her co-worker Long, who is on the Oberlin Community Land Trust,
an organization focused on protecting and facilitating low income housing, some of the
biggest issues the town is facing is that it has not significantly built since the 1960s and that
landlords have situated their apartments in such a way that it is ideal for students. Many rent
out rooms at a time for the whole semester or school year instead of renting out whole
apartments with a month to month lease.
Ron Cheung: Northeast Ohio has at least that benefit of being one of the more affordable
housing markets out there now within Northeast Ohio, though what is really important is to
remember that not all cities and towns and neighborhoods are created equal and so while we
may say Northeast, Ohio overall is pretty affordable it does not necessarily mean that every
neighborhood every city within Northeast Ohio is affordable. So the city of Oberlin to me
represents a little bit of a strange anomaly in all of this, and that is because being a college
town, we have this real pressure on housing prices. So housing prices in Oberlin are probably
a little bit higher than surrounding areas in Lorain County because of the pressures of, you
know, having college professors living in the town. And so they tend to push up the prices a
little bit, relative to other parts of Lorain County.

Braun: That was Ron Cheung, an economics professor at Oberlin College that was kind
enough to sit down with us to answer some questions about how the past 20 years have
affected the housing market, especially the pandemic.
Ron Cheung: I think it was probably a trend that we have been seeing even without a
pandemic. We were seeing these real, concerning housing affordability trends in many
markets where, you know, entry level jobs for students out of college, right, would not come
even close to affording a down payment on a home. Not for at least 5, 10 years , in many
cases more in some parts of the country.
Braun: Cheung later mentioned that a lot of professors and other faculty would love to live
near or on campus, but there is nothing for sale. A solution he has seen elsewhere is schools
building faculty housing. Not only would this open up housing for professors and faculty, but
staff moving into those residences would open up more housing for the townspeople.
Schwartz: Mark Zeno, Assistant Vice President and Dean of Residence, Life, and Auxiliary
Services, commented on the new dorm, the housing situation in Oberlin, and the relationship
between the college and the town.
Mark Zeno: So the idea is let's build a new residence hall that can meet today's students
needs, but also fits within the scope of what the campus looks like. And then with that then
allows us to get an opportunity to create some swing space, which will help us start
renovating some of the other residential properties.
Schwartz: What kind of impact do you think it will have on the town? I've heard that part of
it is, , they're going to phase out off campus housing. So do you think phasing out off campus
housing will be good for the town?
Zeno: I don't know if it'll be good. I think, the word phasing out, it will never really phase
out, right? Because we'll always have students that will meet the exemption standards. I don't
know how much of an effect it will have on the community itself, because especially right
now in this market, people are looking for space everywhere.
Schwartz: Do you think it'll free up housing?
Zeno: I think it'll free some of it up. I mean, I think a lot of the housing that many of our
students are looking at you can tell they converted it to maximize as many students as
possible. I think that will probably change, for some of the landlords to change it back to
family style housing again. I know myself when I first moved here, I could not find housing.
Barely, luckily I learned about a house that was coming for sale and went and sought out the
owner before they jumped on the market. I'm not as familiar with the market right now in the
community, I just know It's dry. There's just not enough property out there right now. People
are looking for it and they can't find it.
Schwartz: I've heard from a local landlord that Oberlin bought up a lot of affordable housing
for village housing, in the past, and that caused some problems. Do you know much about
that?

Zeno: Probably before my time, but I do know that we typically will focus on property
around the campus, which makes sense, right, any of the homes that are near the campus or
touch the campus. Usually it's what most institutions will look to buy because it's convenient,
it's in the area. We do get a lot of landlords and property owners that call our office to sell
their property especially if they're anywhere near our perimeter area. They know the school
usually will buy.
Schwartz: So is Oberlin continually buying new village housing.
Zeno: We've bought a few since I've been here. I know they bought a couple, especially those
around the SIP area, which makes sense. They're in negotiations with the house that's right
next to the construction site. It's going to be a tough property for anybody to buy, once said.
So, I know that Facility Operations is in the midst of working with them, so. But it's usually
just, if there's a need for us. So, as we maybe look at parking expansion, or looking at new
residential hall builds in the future. We may look to see what's in the area, what's close by. If
there's a house that we might not own, we probably might go after that house, and go for a
purchase.
Hyatt: In this episode, we've heard some of the reasons behind this affordable housing crisis.
We've heard many stories about people struggling to find housing. We've also heard city
council members express strong interest in addressing these problems and some of their plans
to do so. Hopefully, if we shed light on this issue in the future, we are able to fix it. Thank
you so much for listening.