University Housing is reducing expenses by postponing projects and purchasing fewer supplies to make up for a funding dip of more than $1.5 million, according to Housing officials.
Mike Eyster, assistant vice president for student affairs and director of Housing, said housing revenues have fallen by 6 or 7 percent because fewer students are living in the residence halls. Eyster estimated that University Housing’s revenues have decreased by $1.6 to $1.9 million this year.
Currently, Housing has 3,045 occupants in the halls compared to 3,338 at this time last year, Eyster said.
Eyster said the decrease in the number of residence hall occupants coincides with the cap on freshman enrollment, an administrative effort to stabilize the student population between 20,000 and 21,000.
Eyster said Housing did anticipate a lesser number of freshman occupants in the halls, but the decrease was worse than expected.
Occupancy rates naturally fluctuate from year to year, but this year’s drop was especially painful because last year the University had the largest freshman class in its history, Eyster explained.
He added that Housing relies solely on fees from residence hall occupants for funding and is now trimming fat from its budget in order to absorb the decreases.
For example, housing officials have decided to postpone a project that would have added space-economical storage units to some residence hall rooms. Postponing that project, which was conceived one year ago, has saved them $90,000, Eyster said.
He also said they are going to reduce expenses by traveling less, spending less money on food and purchasing fewer supplies. Housing has not laid off any employees, Eyster said, and he doubts that it has hired fewer student employees as a result of the decrease. He said when Housing does hire fewer students employees, it’s because there are fewer residents and thus less demand for employees, not to cut costs.
Custodian Liz Hahn, who manages Walton Complex, said she hasn’t seen the cut drastically affect the staff or the students.
She said the buildings have been well kept up and repairs have been made when necessary. In fact, new locks have been installed that are safer than the previous ones, she said.
“University Housing is making sure that the rooms are the best that we can do,” she said.
Eyster said the biggest reduction in costs this year came with the statewide wage freeze for public employees, which saved Housing approximately $500,000 and affected all of its 200 full-time employees.
But Hahn saw the wage freeze in a different light.
“The funding cut that is the most painful is the state wage freeze,” she said.
For the past few years the cost of living in the residence halls has risen between 4 percent and 5 percent each year, Eyster said. This year, the rate for each person to stay in a standard double room, which houses two people with an 80-point meal plan each, is $6,565, according to the University Housing Web site.
During years with higher occupancy rates, Eyster said Housing put money in reserve funds to prepare for down years. Last year it put $1.36 million into reserves and transferred $1.9 million into operating revenues for this year. It may appear that the reserve fund would completely offset the decrease this year, however, Eyster explained that they can’t simply drain those funds because next year might present another drop.
“I need to think about steering this office like steering a big boat,” he said. “And you don’t just turn it on a dime.”