Reported for my Advanced Audio and Podcast Reporting class at UMD, JOUR364.
I helped report this story, contributing data analysis and the interview with Dennis Passarella-George, the director of resident life at UMD. Nicole Blanchard and Aaron Wright reported as well. Grace Kpetemey and Mat Schumer anchored the episode. Julia Eisen was the executive producer. Molly Williams was the editor. Lisa Wörlfl produced the episode.
A turtle’s shell is its home, its armor, protection, support. Quite literally, it’s the foundation of its life. And when this foundation is cracked, broken or stressed, it could have serious implications on the quality of life of the animal.
Mat: And for University of Maryland students, who proudly wear the label of “Terp” on their sleeve, we are seeing serious cracks in the foundation of their own homes, their own shells. With the school’s mascot named after the terrapin turtle, an animal that can only move forward, students are finding that they are being walked off a financial cliff. Their housing is increasingly getting way too costly, leaving some students with no direction to move in.
We examined those fractures in the shells of our fellow terps, students who don’t have any financial support as an option and have to pay their own way.
And from what we found, it’s clear: There is a problem in college park.
From Merrill College, I’m Grace Kpetemey, and I’m Mat Schumer, this is “Shell Shocked.”
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“We’re not staying in College Park. Like it’s become so extremely clear that we cannot stay here, things are getting stupid expensive.”
“No housing in this area is cheap. For some students it means that they gotta sacrifice convenience for cost.”
“One time we did have someone break into our house and we assume it may have been more than once.”
“It’s always scary because as a renter you never know when your landlord is going to think, ‘Oh, i can probably get more so I’m going to up the rent a lot,’ and then you have to just move, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“I go to school for free but that’s only because i have so much financial aid, but my financial aid does not cover rent.”
“A lot of students are working minimum wage jobs and you can’t make that and you have to live, because there’s very little housing around which is why they keep tearing things down and building up more.”
“We need more housing, but it’s all just luxury.”
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Grace: Our story begins where any story about housing should: At somebody’s home.
Leah Rola: “And then we are going to walk around to the left side of our house, to the other side door which is actually where the man came into our house.”
Grace: That was Leah Rola, a finance major at UMD who is graduating this spring.
Rola: “So we had as you can see, up there on these stairs in front of this side door is another Ring camera and it does like a wide lens, so it sees flowers from all the way over there, which is the corner of slide back side of the house, all the way to the front of the house.”
Mat: Rola is completely financially independent at the age of 21. This burden of paying her own bills affects all aspects of her life from her social life to academics. The $735 a month she pays may be low compared to other options in college park, but it the very real pressure of making rent is no joke.
Rola: “I think it’s just overall like, just kind of a stressful thing. Because you know, if you can afford it that month, like you have nothing else to really fall back on. So it just kind of completely shifts your priorities and like, how you view what’s most important and what activities you would like to put first.”
Grace: Rola is from outside of Philadelphia, which means commuting is not an option Because of this, she’s had to make some choices about where to live. But ‘choice’ is a strong word, Rola explained how she has no option but to live further from campus, in an area where she feels like she and her roommates are at a higher risk than others. And Rola feels this way for good reason, her rental home on Drexel road was broken into last summer.
Rola: “We live closer to the metro, which tends to be a little bit more of a dangerous or risky area and one time, we did have someone break into our house, and we assume it was it may have been more than once.”
Mat: It was summer in College Park. And what Rola described happening that July night was truly unnerving — to say the least. She said that her roommate, who lived in the basement, awoke to the man grabbing her in her bed. When he realized she had woken up, he ran out of the house, covering his face. Rola and her roommates installed new expensive security equipment after the incident — another financial responsibility.
Rola: “They said that they assume that he was watching us for like a couple of weeks at the minimum. I think that was the only time something like that did happen. But it was terrifying.”
Grace: But it’s not just safety. Rola says her education has been deeply impacted by her financial situation.
Rola: “Yeah, I think that my priorities right now rely around my internship and babysitting and I don’t focus on school as much as i used to. My social life has also plummeted because I am usually at work when all my friends have been hanging out.”
Mat: If you want to know just how stressful this can be, Rola walked us through her busiest semester.
Rola: “My busiest day was last semester. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have three classes back-to-back. So I would start at like 9:00 am and then I be at school until like 1:45 or 2:00ish, and then I would do my internship remote from 2:00 to 5:30 or 6:00ish, and then after that, I would go and serve at a restaurant until the restaurant closed, probably around 10 or 11.”
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Mat: Let’s look at the bigger picture. 18% of UMD students receive need-based aid from the federal government. That’s just under 7400 students who can’t afford college without help. The federal government uses a formula to determine how much students or their parents, if they’re in the picture, can reasonably pay for college. The government pays the rest. So, when it comes to finding a place to live, let’s just say there’s a lot of people in college park competing for affordable options.
Grace: The median rent is $1700. $1700.
“Right now, I pay about 1650 for rent.” Grace: Officials at UMD and College Park recognize that this is a problem.
Dennis Passarella-George: “There’s a higher cost of living that’s implicit and coming to the University of Maryland. And then that means all of us have to make choices. Nothing is cheap.”
Grace: That’s Dennis Passarella-George, the director of resident life at UMD. According to census data, this high median cost means people without a college degree are spending as much as 40% of their income on rent. Passarella-George says the high rent prices mean people have to choose between cost, location and amenities.
Grace: If you value cost above all else, you could live in a relatively cheap house further from campus, — and maybe have a couple house guests like burglars — or you could live one of the city’s numerous expensive high rises, with nicer amenities but for a lot more money.
Mat: But why are the apartments so expensive anyway? Passarella-George says that developers sink a ton of money into building these complexes and need to pay their investors back — and make a profit.
Passarella-George: “For many of these projects, they don’t have a lot of financial wiggle room to pay off their to pay their investors by dropping their rents.”
Mat: That’s why he doesn’t think that all the new construction in the city — enough for 8000 students, he says — is going to bring down rents.
Passarella-George: “I don’t know that more apartment buildings is going to be cheaper housing for students, I think it’s going to mean it will add to this conversation of location, amenities and cost of living.”
Mat: When expensive housing is not an option, financially independent students often seek alternative arrangements when it comes to living in college park. Sometimes that means sacrificing quality, taking on odd jobs or finding less than ideal living arrangements.
Tiffany Akotia: “Yeah so for me I always knew that I would have to live around, my closest family is in New Jersey.”
Grace: That’s Tiffany Akotia, a senior public health science major UMD. She lives about three miles outside campus at the Mazza GrandMarc apartments — not really walking distance. But it kept her within her price range.
Akotia: “So it was really important for me that it be below a $1,000 because I think it’s kinda crazy to be paying $1,000 for a place that you’re sharing with three or four other people.”
Mat: A four bedroom apartment at the Mazza GrandMarc falls just short of her $1,000 budget at $900/month, per person. Common online reviews for Mazza GrandMarc detail a roach problem, safety concerns, and lackluster management. Yet that hasn’t seemed to bother Akotia.
Akotia: “For me it was important to keep costs low.”
Julia Eisen (reporter): “Do you think that the university accommodates for commuter students very well, or do you think they could do better?”
Akotia: “I think they need to do better. I do think they definitely prioritize students that live on campus and close by. They give more priority to freshman and sophomores, so I knew I had to find a place off campus to live. That’s when I started figuring out how expensive College Park was and how I kinda had to make tradeoffs to be able to live somewhere and actually go to school.”
Grace: One student shared the length she’s gone to keep rent costs low. Just a warning, it’s a bit shocking and pretty gross.
Caroline Howser: “And I peak around the corner into the bathroom and there is just feces everywhere.”
Mat: That’s Caroline Howser. A student maintenance worker at South Campus Commons, UMD’s on campus apartments.
Howser: “If there’s anything that happens in any of the commons buildings when maintenance is closed, I would get a call and I would go fix it.”
Mat: With this position, Caroline’s rent is completely covered. And free rent does sound really nice, but it comes at a cost.
Howser: “So I got a call and all the resident said was that their toilet had overflowed. As soon as the resident opens the door, I see that they’re crying so I was like ‘Oh, this might be a little more than just water.’ And then the resident asks, ‘Do you want gloves?’ That’s when I knew like, ‘Oh, this is about to be bad.’”
Grace: You can probably see where this is going,
Howser: “It must have somehow shot out of the toilet because everything surrounding the toilet was covered, the floor was covered, the hallway floor was covered. The smell was horrible. So yeah, that was definitely probably the worst one.”
Julia (reporter): “And it’s still worth the free rent?”
Caroline: “It is still worth the free rent. That’s the one that definitely had me questioning, like ‘Am I built for this?’ But, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do.”
Grace: While this story may be the most graphic, believe it or not, some students have found an even more unconventional way around expensive rent. Their solution? They call it CHUM.
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Mat: It stands for cooperative housing at University of Maryland. For more than 12 years, this nonprofit has worked to provide affordable housing for low-income students. Rent starts at $350 for shared rooms. That’s more than $1300 cheaper than the median rent in College Park.
One of their houses sits right around the corner from Lidl, a popular grocery store in College Park. It houses eight people. A couple of those students took one of our reporters, Lisa Wörlfl, on a tour.
Bella Scribner: “It looks a little rotten, but it’s a real shark. So it’s about six inches tall, small little shark in like, I’m guessing, formaldehyde. It’s a brown, tiny baby shark, has a label that says shark and it’s got googly eyes on the jar. He’s a little weird guy. He doesn’t even have a name. I wish he did.”
Grace: Shark jar —that’s what these CHUM members nicknamed their house.
Scribner: “I’m Bella Scribner. I am currently the co-president this year with Jennifer, who I think you met. And head of the outreach team and I work with the membership committee. Then we have our whiteboard where we write housing meeting agenda items. Chores, dinner, all that good stuff. Then up here we have two bedrooms. We have the double. And then we have a single, a bathroom, two closets. Very narrow.”
Grace: It works like this: Landlords rent their houses, which operate on old contracts, to CHUM. Then CHUM takes care of renting out the rooms, which makes it less of a hassle for landlords and gives CHUM freedom to find prices that suit their needs. It’s a win-win situation.
Scribner: “We have, this is a cursed single with no windows. But it does have a door to the outside and Charlie lives there. Charlie seems to like it. Eric lives there. He’s our laundry room. We have another bathroom. Both bathrooms have full features. This is me and Jennifer’s, — oh don’t mind the mess. I’m so sorry. This is me and Jennifer’s room. I just like moved my bed around.”
Grace: The cheap rent comes with extra responsibilities. Everyone attends house meetings where residents discuss problems, plans and even conflicts between roommates.
Grace: Shortly after moving in, Scribner became the finance manager for the house. They remind their roommates about rent and splitting utilities and make sure all their business is in order. Scribner’s co-president and roommate Jen Garcia-Herrera takes care of the shared groceries.
Garcia-Herrera: “But no, we share groceries. We have GUFF — I don’t know if this was explained to you — but general use food and furniture. So anything that’s — unless it’s labeled — if it’s yours, then it’s like free to use. I’m the grocery manager. So like once a week I go to the groceries and we each pay, I think, like $60 a month, which is like very cheap because I work at Trader Joe’s.”
Mat: For both Scribner and Garcia-Herrera, low rent was a priority when they moved to Maryland to attend UMD.
Garcia-Herrera: “And in fact, like last year, I’ve like actually like saved a lot of money just because I live here and I don’t live somewhere that’s like three times the price.”
Mat: Other than cheap rent, the people who live at CHUM appreciate the communal aspects of living in a cooperative. At Shark Jar, residents are expected to cook for the whole house once a week. There’s detailed cleaning plans and lots of communication.
Scribner: “Also I haven’t really had much time around queer people. I myself am queer and I felt like it would be a really nice chance to meet new people and connect.” Garcia-Herrera “Yeah, you just have to be very open. A lot of our members are queer or they’re trans or they don’t really come from a very supportive household. So a lot of people come here to find community. So you have to be very open. If you’re a racist or you’re homophobic, we’re not going to accept you.”
(Music)
Grace: Even though the need for affordable housing around campus is as great as ever, CHUM is actually shrinking. Only two houses survived the pandemic. CHUM is working on outreach. Residents are trying to get their friends involved. Cooperative housing is not for everyone. CHUM alone can’t be the only solution to a housing crisis that contributes to homelessness and drives students into debt just so that they can afford rent. Mat: So here’s the million dollar question: What is UMD doing to combat this? Well, the university says it keeps its housing prices low. Dorms, it says, are one of the cheapest options. Students can live in a double without A/C for around $950/month. They can get a private room for about $1,200 dollars a month. Upperclassmen can get rooms at South Campus Commons and Courtyards for a little less than $1000.
Grace: So, not cheap, but less than many high rises.
Mat: More relief could be on the horizon as well. Prince George’s County recently passed rent control that limits rent increases to 3% per year. But the devil is in the details. Buildings constructed within the last five years aren’t subject to the cap.
Grace: So all the new housing that’s being built can increase rent as much as it likes for at least 5 years. Those buildings include The Nine, the Standard and the Alloy, all of which are high rise apartments located on or near College Park’s busiest road, Baltimore Avenue. However, most of College Park’s apartment buildings will have to abide by this new rule.
Mat: Problem solved? Well, not really. The rent stabilization law only protects against increases in rent, so it won’t make rent cheaper any time soon. And on top of that it’s expiring next year unless the county council votes to extend it.
Grace: Dennis Passarella-George, the ResLife director we heard from earlier, has some concerns about the legislation. He says landlords might raise rents by 3% every year, even if their costs didn’t increase that much, because they have to budget for big repairs.
Passarella-George: “Next year, I might have more costs, or I might have to replace the roof or something like that. I might try to bank and say, okay, thanks, Prince George’s County, you allow me to have 3%, I don’t need it this year, but I’m going to increase rents by 3% because next year I might need 3.5%. So I’m gonna bank some of that money this year.”
Mat: Then, there’s those voices from outside UMD’s campus community. Some officials in College Park’s city government have recognized these high prices as a serious problem and have started outlining some steps to address it.
Stuart Adams: “Being in the DC area, which is highly desirable for a lot of families, young professionals, retirees, and of course being by the University of Maryland, there’s a bunch of students and workers that need housing.”
Mat: That’s Stuart Adams, a city council member representing College Park’s District 3, which includes neighborhoods like Berwyn Heights and Riverdale Park as well as some of the city’s newly-built and in-construction apartment complexes like The Standard.
Adams: “I am going to be working with my colleagues to propose a 3¢ tax increase for property owners of apartments, condos, commercial and industrial. And that would raise another $510,000.”
Mat: Then, Adams says, his team hopes to work with student government groups to create an application process for a rent assistance program.
Adams: “And then look to give either $1,000 or $2,000 worth of rent subsidies to students living in newer apartments to see if it works, to see if it makes a meaningful change, and maybe look to make it bigger and better as years to come.”
Grace: Alongside this tax program, Adams has suggested imposing a vacancy tax on apartment buildings to affect a more immediate change in rent prices throughout the city. This means that landlords who don’t rent out all their units, often because they’re holding out for higher rent, will get taxed more on those empty spaces. Adams says this is an effort to lower College Park’s housing market rate. This essentially means he wants an average student to be able to afford to rent in College Park.
Adams: “We want to create a marketplace that does not incentivize vacancy. We want market rate to define a balance between what is essentially affordable or at least of more affordable value. So we’re doing stuff.”
Grace: So yes, there might be some solutions on the horizon. But as we see from these theoretical policies, systemic change takes time. But some UMD students don’t have the time to wait for affordable options.
Garcia-Herrera: “Yeah, it’s important for a lot of people. I’ll say for me personally, I already said I’m from a very rural area. I go to school for free, but that’s only because of I have so much financial aid. My financial aid does not cover rent. And so I provide for myself. I don’t let my parents pay for me. I pay for everything myself. I pay for my rent. I have my own job. I work — like last semester, I worked like 32 hours a week.”
Grace: That’s Jen Garcia-Herrera again, one of the students living at CHUM. Her experience echoes that of so many other UMD students who simply can’t afford to live in college park. Housing issues are complicated, widespread and at times difficult to understand. The bottom line, though? College Park is, for many UMD students, way too expensive.
(Music)
Mat: A Diamondback with a fractured shell is caught in a precarious situation. We’ve seen how our fellow terps are caught with the rising tide of rent, the threat of predators in unsafe habitats, and the lengths terps go to secure their home at the expense of their school and social life.
Grace: Turtle metaphors aside, housing is an incredibly important aspect of life. And for students seeking an education, its importance becomes compounded. Students worrying about safety, making rent and utilities, all while keeping up with classes and maintaining a social life becomes a daunting task.
Mat: But the big takeaway for Terps living in College Park is that it isn’t a hopeless situation. Collective living spaces can create a cheap, community-based alternative. New tax reforms aim to squash rising rent with the potential to lower rent in the long run. And despite horror stories of crap-laden ceramics, there are positions on campus that can cover room-and-board.
Grace: There are plenty more solutions that we didn’t cover: Wage increases, building affordable housing and repurposing vacant properties are some options outside of this podcast. However, the journalists at UMD hope to show you that there’s a future beyond becoming shell shocked.
Grace: This show is a production of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism from the advanced audio reporting class. It was created by me, Grace Kpetemey, along with my co-host Mathew Schumer and produced by Lisa Wörlfl. Julia Eisen is our executive producer, Molly Williams is our editor with reporters Nicole Blanchard, Joel Lev-Tov Aaron Wright. Special thanks to our supervisor Robert Little.
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