The University’s proposed sale of Westmoreland Apartments, the 37-building complex located three miles west of campus, has garnered a large amount of negative publicity. The administration has been accused of being insensitive and greedy, both for potentially evicting hundreds of nontraditional students and for trying to cut costs when it became clear that the housing was no longer worth keeping up.
Opponents of the sale are concerned with what will happen to the families, international students and graduate students who are currently living in Westmoreland. They feel the University is abandoning them in order to turn a greater profit.
I understand and sympathize with the tenants. I myself will also be affected, though admittedly not nearly as much, because I have applied for nontraditional student housing for the next school year. Because of the sale, I will most likely not receive student housing and will be forced to pay much higher rent somewhere else in Eugene.
That being said, this community needs to put the sale in perspective. The University does have a responsibility to help its students – but not if it’s going to hurt the school. Even though the University is a public school, it is still a business. There is no way the administration should be expected to keep around a drain on resources like Westmoreland, especially since it’s nowhere near campus. And as Vice President and Provost John Moseley said in a recent speech, the University is not in the business of providing students with food and housing – that’s what financial aid is for.
The Westmoreland Apartments would sell for an estimated $15 to $18 million, which is roughly half of what a new residence hall on campus would cost, according to a November press release from the University. The sale would also save the University from having to spend millions of dollars to renovate the 45-year-old complex during the next few years.
The administration has promised that the money from the sale will only be used for student housing and won’t go toward any other project the University is currently undertaking. Most likely, the proceeds from the sale would be used to pay off the $10 million owed to the Oregon University System, which was loaned to the University to build new residence halls.
Currently, the University is paying roughly $1 million every year to the OUS, and would continue paying off its debt until 2027. Not having to pay more than $1 million yearly to the OUS far outweighs the lost profits from Westmoreland. Eliminating the debt to the OUS would make it much easier for the University to pursue its plan to improve the quality of the current residence halls, as well as build new residence halls on campus and expand graduate student housing.
Many have said that building new residence halls and graduate housing will do nothing to help the families being displaced by the sale. However, according to figures from Westmoreland’s Web site, only 37 of the 340 leaseholders reported having children as of Oct. 31, 2005. Although it’s unfortunate, there really isn’t the demand to warrant building new family housing. Westmoreland itself isn’t at full capacity and hasn’t been for some time. The complex has a capacity of 404 units, and is only about 84 percent full. If there were a huge demand for nontraditional housing, I would expect Westmoreland to be full. By contrast, there’s always a demand for residence halls – it seems that almost every year the University is setting a new attendance record.
The tenants of Westmoreland aren’t being forgotten, however. The administration has guaranteed them preferential treatment in awarding housing for the next year and will work with students to help with the transition. Those who took advantage of the child care services offered at Westmoreland will be provided with the service elsewhere on campus. In addition, the administration announced yesterday that the tenants would be allowed to stay in Westmoreland until Aug. 31, allowing them more time to find housing for the next school year.
The University has to grow, and in order to do so, sometimes hard
decisions need to be made. Is this sale perfect? Of course not. It will affect hundreds, if not thousands of students at the University for years to come. But keeping a dilapidated housing complex for the sake of making the tenants happy won’t solve anything. Avoiding the issue will do nothing to change the fact that Westmoreland has outlived its usefulness.
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