The sale of the Westmoreland Apartments is an ill-conceived idea that will cause hundreds of people to scramble for housing they may not be able to afford, current tenants told University officials at a meeting Wednesday evening.
More than 50 men, women and children packed the Westmoreland Community Room to air their concerns to Vice President for Finance and Administration Frances Dyke and Interim Vice President for Student Affairs and Director of University Housing Mike Eyster.
The University announced last week that it will be asking the State Board of Higher Education permission to sell the property, which is considered family housing, at the board’s Nov. 3-4 meeting at Portland State University.
The property has been valued at $15-$18 million, money Eyster and Dyke said will ultimately go toward improving University-owned housing closer to campus and could be immediately used to purchase property as the opportunities arise. Tenant James
Butcher said after the meeting that he would like to know what exactly will be bought with the money.
“What is unsaid is what we really want to know,” Butcher said.
Comments from attendees during the meeting focused on the reasoning behind the sale and the lack of affordable housing alternatives in Eugene.
Eyster and Dyke defended the decision to ask permission to sell by discussing the need for improved on-campus housing and by discussing the high cost of maintaining the apartments into the future.
Many attendees questioned what was wrong with the infrastructure of the apartments, asking why the University did not feel it would be cost efficient to maintain the apartments. Eyster said the quality of the buildings is a judgment call but also said the University is “anticipating the infrastructure failing.”
One person suggested taking out bonds to pay for the future upkeep of the apartments, but Dyke said getting the state legislature to approve such a thing would be next to impossible.
“It seems extraordinarily unlikely that we would be able to secure bonds to renovate this property,” Dyke said.
Bing Li, chair of the Westmoreland Tenants Council, questioned why no public hearing had been held in front of the Family Housing Board as state law requires, and Eyster said such a hearing will be held at the next board meeting, assuming the higher education board grants the University permission to sell the property.
Many attendees expressed concern that they will not be able to find another place as diverse as Westmoreland.
“You’re not talking about dollars and cents here – you’re talking about families and lives,” graduate student Hasnah Toran said. “It’s really like home here. It’s a global village.”
According to a University press release, 25 international students live at Westmoreland, but many attendees disputed that number and said it’s actually much higher. One person said he recently moved in and was not asked his country of origin on the application, and he questioned how the University could track the number of international students without asking that question.
Victoria Rodriguez, a Westmoreland tenant and University student, said the decision to get rid of the apartments for the purpose of improving on-campus housing was a discriminatory act.
“I personally feel that this is discrimination against age,” she said. “There is no availability, and there hasn’t been in the two years I’ve been here,” referring to University Housing’s other off-campus housing.
The University has said it will give priority to married students with children who live at Westmoreland and would like to move to other University Housing apartments, but many attendees said those options are too limited and just aren’t affordable.
Darlene Hampton, a GTF in the English department, said she pays $355 for her Westmoreland apartment and will not be able to find a better deal anywhere else.
“I’m on a fixed income,” Hampton said. “For $355 a month I could live in a cockroach-infested apartment on Seventh and Blair.”
Units in the other apartments operated by housing are difficult to obtain because of the high demand, Hampton said, and the majority of the Westmoreland tenants will not be able to move there because of cost or demand or both.
“You’re displacing 600 people,” Hampton said. “Have you not thought about what you’re going to do with all of us?”
Hampton said the Graduate Teaching Fellow Federation, the union for GTFs, is against the sale and members will be traveling to Portland to speak at the State Board of Higher Education meeting next week.