In January, Mayor Martin Walsh announced a plan to address what were then estimated at some 580 overcrowded student housing units in Boston. Three full months later, the number of potentially dangerous off-campus student living spaces is pegged at 589, and City Hall acknowledges it has inspected just 102 of them.
Walsh’s office released the city’s first-ever student housing report, Thursday. The report measures the number of students living on-campus and off in Boston, and restates the administration’s biggest student housing priorities for the year. Walsh wants to stop landlords from illegally renting off-campus housing to more than four undergraduates, set firm deadlines for the construction of additional on-campus dorms and generate ways for private developers to build off-campus housing that meets specific community standards.
Some landlords, such as Alpha Realty’s Anwar Faisal, have come under fire in recent years for providing students with unsafe living conditions. Boston University student Binland Lee died in 2013 after she was trapped in her attic bedroom when the overcrowded Allston house she was living in caught fire. (The unit was not owned by Faisal.) At the time, no count had been made of how many similarly overcrowded off-campus student units existed in Boston. Only a fraction of the city’s off-campus student housing units had ever been inspected.
In January, city officials released a study of university student rolls, finding about 580 such properties. Now, that number stands at 589 and the city has undertaken to inspect all of them. So far, 102 of those properties have actually been inspected, city Inspectional Services Commissioner William Christopher told The Boston Globe. At this rate, the city is on pace to complete its inquiry by June of 2016.
BostInno asked the mayor’s office for comment, and will update if we hear back.
The report found that 32 percent of the 148,402 undergraduates who attend school in Boston live on-campus. Of the two-thirds who live off-campus, 38 percent reside in the City of Boston. The other 62 percent live in other communities.
That makes 21,425 undergraduates living off-campus in Boston, according to the Mayor’s report – a drop of 1,442 since fall 2013. As of 2013, the number of graduates and undergraduates living off campus in Boston had hit 45,000, an increase of 36 percent over the prior 6 years, the Globe reported in 2014.
To keep numbers headed in that direction, Walsh wants the city’s universities to create 18,500 new dorm beds by 2030. There are currently 984 beds under construction, and an additional 902 are expected to begin erection in the near future. These beds are expected to be completed by 2018. It remains to be seen whether City Hall can hold universities to those plans.
