UConn students confront housing crunch as enrollment rises

By Julia Gillego | UConn Jour­nal­ism
Octo­ber 9, 2025

With on-cam­pus beds falling far short of stu­dent demand, many Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut stu­dents were forced into expen­sive off-cam­pus hous­ing this fall, and for some, the finan­cial and emo­tion­al bur­den is over­whelm­ing.

Day­la Reyes, an hon­ors stu­dent from Long Island major­ing in sport man­age­ment and minor­ing in soci­ol­o­gy, was shocked to be wait­list­ed for hous­ing in the spring because she said she had been guar­an­teed hous­ing for four years as a mem­ber of the Hon­ors Pro­gram.

“Hav­ing to pay month­ly rent now has added even more finan­cial stress for both me and my fam­i­ly,” Reyes said. “UConn needs to keep the promis­es they make. If stu­dents are told they’re guar­an­teed four years of hous­ing, then they should get it.”

After months on the wait list, she said she was final­ly offered an on-cam­pus space, but only after she signed an off-cam­pus lease. Choos­ing sta­bil­i­ty over a last-minute change, she hung on to the lease and is liv­ing off cam­pus.

Reyes said UConn should improve how it com­mu­ni­cates about the hous­ing real­i­ties to incom­ing stu­dents and fam­i­lies.

“If that’s not real­is­tic, then they need to say that upfront,” Reyes said. “The uni­ver­si­ty needs to pro­vide more than just a link for off-cam­pus hous­ing. They should offer real sup­port, guid­ance and resources for stu­dents who sud­den­ly have to find a place to live.”

UConn spokesper­son Stephanie Reitz said first-year Hon­ors stu­dents are required to live in Hon­ors in Storrs if they live on cam­pus, but oth­er­wise, she said they don’t receive addi­tion­al guar­an­tees for hous­ing.

Reitz said that now, UConn has no wait­ing list for hous­ing and that all stu­dents who applied and were eli­gi­ble have received offers, “as we antic­i­pat­ed and dis­cussed pub­licly through­out the process.”

She empha­sized that the uni­ver­si­ty is hous­ing a record num­ber of near­ly 13,400 stu­dents at Storrs, includ­ing in units leased this year at The Oaks on the Square, an off-cam­pus com­plex in Down­town Storrs. The on-cam­pus hous­ing is at full capac­i­ty and includes areas where lounges were con­vert­ed into liv­ing spaces to help meet demand, she said. Reitz added that the recent open­ing of The Stan­dard at Four Cor­ners com­plex helped ease demand as some stu­dents chose to rent there for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year.

The university’s increased pop­u­lar­i­ty is dri­ving the hous­ing crunch. In the fall of 2020, UConn had 18,917 under­grad­u­ates enrolled on the Storrs cam­pus, accord­ing to the university’s annu­al fact sheet. As of fall 2025 that num­ber has risen to a pre­lim­i­nary enroll­ment num­ber of 20,500.

Cian­na Tangisha­ka, a senior from Mass­a­chu­setts, also major­ing in sport man­age­ment, said she care­ful­ly read every piece of paperwork—including the hous­ing contract—and expect­ed she would have the option to live on cam­pus all four years.

“I did the hous­ing appli­ca­tion right away, so the real­i­ty that I actu­al­ly was not giv­en hous­ing was shock­ing,” Tangisha­ka, who is Reyes’ room­mate, said. “I’m the eldest of three, and I was extreme­ly stressed think­ing about how the cost would affect my par­ents.”

Tangisha­ka said the uni­ver­si­ty failed to plan respon­si­bly.

“UConn didn’t live up to its promis­es,” she said. “They shouldn’t have antic­i­pat­ed any hous­ing con­straints with­out mak­ing sure to take care of the pop­u­la­tion that was already pay­ing its bills.”

Her mes­sage to admin­is­tra­tors is blunt.

“I hope you nev­er have to expe­ri­ence the wor­ry so many of us faced when we had two weeks to find a house or apart­ment,” she said.

Anoth­er stu­dent, Nick Miele, an account­ing major from the Bronx, New York, said he felt dis­placed last spring.

“I’m pay­ing $30,000 a year for tuition to be home­less,” Miele said. “I can’t go here if I don’t have hous­ing on cam­pus.”

Miele said that as the num­ber of first-year stu­dents UConn admits increas­es, it seems that avail­able hous­ing for upper­class­men con­tin­ues to shrink.

“The uni­ver­si­ty is just not expand­ing hous­ing at the same pace as enroll­ment,” Miele said.

After months of what he described as “lot­tery-style uncer­tain­ty,” Miele land­ed Hon­ors hous­ing after all on cam­pus.

For the 2025–2026 aca­d­e­m­ic year, the low­est-priced UConn hous­ing option costs $4,033 per semes­ter and $8,066 annu­al­ly. In con­trast, off-cam­pus hous­ing can run more than twice that amount per year. The Oaks is the only off-cam­pus hous­ing com­plex affil­i­at­ed with UConn. A dou­ble-occu­pan­cy apart­ment in The Oaks leased through UConn costs $7,715 per semes­ter, or $15,430 per year. Sin­gle-occu­pan­cy units in the same com­plex can reach $9,894 or more per semes­ter, or $19,788 annu­al­ly.

But oth­er off-cam­pus com­plex­es – includ­ing those units of The Oaks that are leased inde­pen­dent­ly, The Stan­dard, Celeron Square Apart­ments and Car­riage House Town­homes – do not have for­mal part­ner­ships with UConn. The stu­dents who live in these loca­tions must sign pri­vate leas­es and han­dle all hous­ing logis­tics them­selves.

The Stan­dard charges upwards of $2,447.95 per month for a one-bed­room unit, total­ing near­ly $30,000 annu­al­ly. The Oaks, when not leased through UConn, runs about $2,360 per month for a one-bed­room unit.

Celeron Square offers a rate of $1,326 per month for a one-bed­room apart­ment, still amount­ing to $15,912 annu­al­ly.

Car­riage House Town­homes, which only offers two-bed­room, one-bath­room units, starts at $2,400 per month.

For stu­dents like George Cooke, a bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing stu­dent in the Hon­ors Pro­gram from Long Island, the finan­cial dis­par­i­ty between on-cam­pus and off-cam­pus liv­ing is dif­fi­cult to man­age.

After strug­gling to secure a spot on cam­pus the sum­mer before com­ing to UConn, Cooke lived at The Oaks in the fall his first year.

“Finan­cial­ly, it’s $8,000 more a year to live in the Oaks com­pared to what I would have been doing for Buck­ley,” Cooke said, ref­er­enc­ing the $8,886 annu­al cost of liv­ing in Buck­ley Hall, one of the des­ig­nat­ed fresh­man Hon­ors hous­ing dorms. “But here, I don’t even have a meal plan.”

Cooke also not­ed the emo­tion­al toll of the process.

“They didn’t feel very help­ful at all,” Cooke said, describ­ing the lack of sup­port he received from UConn’s res­i­den­tial life hous­ing depart­ment. “They’re admit­ting so many stu­dents that they know they don’t have hous­ing for.”

Cooke was able to secure a room in South Cam­pus this year because his friends invit­ed him to take one of the open spots in their suite.

John Arm­strong, the asso­ciate dean of stu­dents at UConn, said the Dean of Stu­dents Office pro­vides off-cam­pus hous­ing resources through the UConn Off-Cam­pus Hous­ing web­site.

Arm­strong not­ed that after the office’s staff was reduced, many of respon­si­bil­i­ties were absorbed into his role.

In 2024, the uni­ver­si­ty saw the need to sup­port stu­dents who are either look­ing for off-cam­pus hous­ing or area com­mut­ing to cam­pus. While resources are stretched thin, he said that the office is still striv­ing to meet stu­dents’ needs.

“The fact that I am there and run that office is very help­ful because I have con­nec­tions with off- cam­pus prop­er­ties,” he said. “The staffing has been reduced sig­nif­i­cant­ly, but we’re still able to sup­port stu­dents in the best way we can.”

Julia Gillego is a jour­nal­ism and com­mu­ni­ca­tion major at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut.