As College Begins, Some Students Are Scrambling For Housing

Middlebury is paying students $10,000 to take the semester off. Other schools are housing students in everything from trailers to rooms at a casino resort—or leaving them to fend for themselves.

_{By Alex Perry, Forbes Staff}

Priscila Sepulveda is set to begin her junior year as a film major at the University of California, Berkeley on August 23rd—if she can just find somewhere to live. “Sleeping in my car and being homeless is probably my only option right now since family housing for Berkeley is out of reach for the fall,” says the 23-year-old, who lost her spot in the school’s housing queue for married students when she took last year off to live in San Diego, where her husband was stationed with the Marines. College administrators are telling her not to expect housing until October, at the earliest, she reports. Problem is, if she takes the semester off while waiting for housing, she’ll lose her place in line again. “I was excited to come back to school but now it just feels like school is only stressing me out,’’ she says.

As millions of college students happily move into their campus or off-campus digs, some of their peers still don’t know where they’ll be living during the fall semester. Being admitted to a university does not necessarily guarantee campus housing; schools typically plan to house just 25% to 35% of students on-campus with an emphasis on providing beds for freshmen and sophomores, says Daniel Bernstein, president and chief investment officer at Campus Apartments, the student housing development company led by billionaire David Adelman.