Jarrett Watkins & Samir Corpening-Thompson | GNP contributors
Taylor Rollison had to drop out of ECU so she could get a full-time job to support herself.
“I was working part-time to pay for rent and going to ECU,” she says. “But I started to struggle in my classes.”
Rollison used to be a nursing major. Now she's a pharmacy technician at ECU Health.
For renters, housing takes more than 30% of their income, and that makes them “cost burden,” a U.S. Census Bureau report says. It hits low-wage owners especially hard. Put student renters in that group and add the costs of tuition, books, and other university fees.
“I still want to get my degree,” Rollison says, and she hopes to save enough money to pay her own tuition and fees. Until then, affording housing is the priority.
The Greenville News Project set out to document the housing cost problem among ECU students. It found that getting information on cost increases at off-campus student apartment complexes is like trying to get a straight answer from a politician. Most complexes GNP contacted talked around the issue or did not want to talk about it all.
Growing market, higher prices
Tarnisha Hicks has witnessed the growth in student living complexes in Greenville over her 15 years of managing properties. “Greenville has [become] one of the most saturated markets in North Carolina,” she says. “And it keeps growing.”
With the growth, competition continues to increase. Greenville currently has 19 large privately owned student-living complexes.
One of Greenville’s newest apartment complexes, The Jolly Roger, posts its prices on its website. The business owned by the Raleigh-based JRR Ventures charges $1,649 a month for a one-bedroom unit.
After that, units are priced by the room. A two-bedroom apartment rents for $929 per month person or $1,858 total. It’s $859 per room for a three-bedroom and $839 per room—$3,355 per month total—for a four-bedroom. Other fees, such as electricity and utilities, are separate costs.
The Jolly Rogers is a few blocks from ECU’s downtown campus. The older Cooper Beach Townhomes is nearly three miles away. It’s owned by the Chicago-based Scion Group of student housing investors. Its one-bedroom units rent for $999 a month and its four-bedroom units rent for $399 a month per room.
“It’s hard competing with new, freshly made, never lived-in apartments when you’ve been here since 2009,” said Hicks of Copper Beech.
The main reason is the location and being close to ECU’s campus is a pricey luxury. And students are willing to pay for it.
A marketing survey by Naija Reyes, the social media manager of Copper Beech, shows that luxury student-living complexes within five minutes’ walking distance of campus are at or near 100 percent occupancy. Other complexes are far less full. At Copper Beech, the occupancy rate is 68 percent.
GNP contacted 10 of the large off-campus student apartment complexes. Cooper Beach and three others responded.
Help with rent
The Covid pandemic forced ECU students to return home, and that hurt many of Greenville’s apartment complexes because many students just stopped paying rent. Plus, a number of states put moratoriums on evictions until the summer of 2021.
“With Covid, there were so many programs that assisted with rent,” Hicks, the property manager, said. “I remember specifically they had a grant of some sort given to students.”
That grant was the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund Grant (HEERF), and it awarded students as much as $1,500 a semester for four semesters until the $9.7 million worth of student-only funds ran out in 2021.
“Students used these funds to pay for food, rent, bills, things like that,” Hicks said. “When the money stopped coming, a lot of students struggled to pay rent.”
Although HEERF is gone, there is funding for students who struggle to pay rent. One source is the city of Greenville.
“Many students from ECU and Pitt Community College [have] applied for the [city’s] rental assistance program so far in 2024,” said Lori Guttman of the city’s Neighborhood and Business Services department.
“We had 447 people sign up from Pitt and receive funds, and 1,387 people from ECU,” she says. To qualify, students must be at least three months behind on rent.
Copper Beech, Pirates Cove and the Voyager all received funds from Greenville’s assistance program. The other complexes GNP contacted declined to say.
The Voyager is three miles from ECU, and it’s owned a New Hampshire company. Pirates Cove is nearby.
Making ends meet
Students living off campus vary in how they pay their rent. Some work fulltime and study fulltime. Some don’t have to worry about their finances because they receive support from their parents.
Rollison, a resident of Campus Pointe, is in the first group. She had to drop out of ECU and get a fulltime job to support herself.
She and others like her want to go back to school, but that is a wait-and-see process. “I still want to get my [nursing] degree but working part-time isn’t going to be enough for tuition and rent,” she said.
Campus Point is about two and a half miles from the ECU campus. It is owned by Stonecreek Living, which has more than 6,000 student-living units in the U.S.
Although she works as a pharmacy technician, she can’t move up at the ECU Health hospital without a degree. “I’m glad I’m gaining experience in a related field, but without going to college, I’m stuck at the bottom,” she says.
Parker Woodall, a resident of The Province, across from the Jolly Roger, does not have Rollison’s worries. His parents pay for his schooling.
Still, he’s concerned about the expenses. “Right now, my rent is $700 per month, but at the start of next semester it’s going up to $790,” he says. “Without my parent’s help I wouldn’t be able to live at The Province or most complexes close to campus.”
Jackson Pate, a resident of Carolina Creek, has found a balance between working to pay rent and attending school. “I work fulltime during the summer and make pretty good money to where I can cover my rent throughout the school year,” he says.
Carolina Creek has gone up on its rent by $30 per month in the last year, but it doesn't offer discounts for re-signing residents. It’s about a mile and a half from ECU and owned by an Arizona company.
“It’d be nice to get a discount or the rent to stay the same when I re-sign my lease every year,” Pate says. “But it only going up 50 bucks in the last three years isn’t half bad.”
He adds, “If I lived in any of those other places, I wouldn’t be able to not work in the spring and fall because it’s too expensive.”
Rising gas prices and parking fees add to the financial struggle. “Parking is $40 extra per month, which seems insane,” Woodall says.
Although it is more expensive to live at the luxury complexes close to campus, there is an upside.
“Being able to walk to class and have everything I need near me it does help since I don’t have to pay for gas so often,” he says.
Brianna Pippin lives in the neighborhood of rental houses across from campus that students refer to as the Grid. Like other students, Pippin has been affected by the price of gas and parking. “I can’t even afford to have my car here anymore,” she says.
Having no car is its own downside when it comes to grocery shopping. “I normally end up getting them delivered,” she says. “When it's all said and done, I'm probably paying about the same for food delivery that I would be paying for gas.”
Watkins and Corpening-Thompson produced this story for the course, In-depth Reporting Capstone, at the School of Communication, East Carolina University.
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