Deciding what type of housing is the right choice is a challenge for many students who considers things like comfort, affordability and convenience while making their decisions.
Some basic living expenses include food, shelter, clothes and entertainment.
For students many different options exists about of where to live and how to eat. A student can live in the college residence halls and have a meal plan or choose to live off-campus in an apartment, a house or rent a single bedroom in a large house.
The costs of shelter and food can range $555-$947 per month. The low end being apartment living and the high a student living in a double dorm with the 125-meal plan option.
Starting college students tend to stay on campus their freshman year to meet new people. The dorms offer a convenient way to be close to campus and meet a variety of people right away.
Western freshman Christine Henie lives in a triple room on the Ridge in the dorm Delta. She is an out-of-state student and lives in Alaska when not at school. She said she chose to live in the dorms because it is close to campus and she did not know anyone before coming to Western.
In a dorm setting there are two options for the setup of rooms. One option is suit-style where a group of 4-10 people share one bathroom and the rooms are grouped together. The other option consists of single rooms and a community bathroom.
Another Delta resident and freshman Aja Brofferio said the community bathroom is the most disgusting thing ever. These bathrooms can be shared with roughly 30 people.
A dorm room must contain a bed, desk, and dresser or closet for each person living in the room. Henie said a person does not have much personal space living in a triple.
“I don’t want to be a debby-downer, but it’s [living in a triple] kind of the worst thing ever,” Henie said.
Brofferio said living in a triple there is always someone in the room. She said every person has a different schedule and it does not work well to have alone time in the room.
“Sometimes I want to turn on my music and not have to worry about getting evil looks from one of my roommates,” Brofferio said.
Both women said they plan to live on campus again next year because of the closeness to campus. Neither would like to live in a triple room again.
Living in a triple room these students pay $469 per month for nine months out of the year to live in the dorms. For a meal plan, which students living on campus are required to have, they pay about $357 a month.
For a double room, which is one of the most common living situations on campus, students pay $590 per month.
Western sophomore Stefanie Zulauf lived on campus her freshman year and currently lives in an apartment near campus. Her agreement with her parents is they will pay her tuition, but she must pay her housing costs.
She said the apartment is more affordable for her than living in the dorms. She said she pays $347 per month for rent, $40 for cable and Internet and $18 for electricity. She said she also budgets $150 for food each month and finds this to be a generous amount.
Zulauf said she chose to live on campus her freshman year to meet new people and be close to campus, but the apartment offers her a way to save money.
“I liked being so close to so many people and it helps you make relationships quickly,” Zulauf said. “But with an apartment you are in control of your own food so you don’t have to spend as much.”
Another option Zulauf had was to live in a house. She said she chose the apartment because it is more manageable. She said living with one person as opposed to two or three is easier on the communication.
“If I have a problem with something I only have to tell one person instead of two or three,” she said.
Western sophomore Kristen Eide lives in a house with five other students. She pays $360 in rent, $30 in utilities and $10 for cable and Internet.
Eide said her favorite part about living off-campus is the quietness and having a fridge of her own. She said she is able to do homework without being distracted.
Another draw of having a house is having a yard, Eide said. Unlike most rental houses Eide said someone comes in and takes care of the yard. This chore can fall to the people renting the house.
A fourth option for housing is renting a single room in a large house. Western junior Hannah Norberg lives with over 15 people in one house. She said she lives in four-story house with three different units.
One unit is the fourth floor, the attic, which has four people living in it. Another is her unit which is two floors and will have 11 people when one roommate returns from her quarter in Europe. The third unit is the bottom floor with three guys.
She said each room has their own bathroom and there is one kitchen for each unit. There is also a dining room, living room and laundry room in the house.
Norberg said she knew all the other women in her unit and three rooms are shared between two people. She shares a room and pays $387 in rent. For those with a single room the rent is $480 a month.
She said cable is included and with so many people utilities only costs about 3 dollars per person.
For students who are paying their own housing costs renting and apartment is much cheaper than the dorms. The cost of renting an apartment or getting a group of friends together to rent a house are much closer together. That is where the choice becomes more about personal preference, Norberg said.
Norberg said that she feels like houses have more character and apartments are plain and harder to make cute. She said she lived in an apartment the previous year and moving to a house was an easy change.
“I didn’t plan to live in a house,” Norberg said. “It just happened.”
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