Ethan Tan, center right, and his roommates stand for a portrait on their front porch in College Station on April 23, 2024. Tan lives in a four-bedroom, four-bath house with six other students and pays around $400 per month in rent.For three years in college, Texas A&M University student Ethan Tan lived in houses near campus with six roommates, each of them paying about $400 a month in rent.
The friction not only highlights how college students have increasingly struggled with housing costs but also the challenges cities across Texas face when trying to balance homeowners’ concerns with the need to provide affordable housing. The typical rent in the College Station area sat at more than $1,500 a month in April, according to Zillow data — some 29% higher than it was the same month in 2019. About 57% percent of renters in the Bryan-College Station region are “cost-burdened,” according toby A&M’s Division of Student Affairs found that more than one third of undergraduate students said they worried about the cost of food and housing during the previous school year.
“Every side in this debate has a reasonable position,” Yancy said. “The big picture is the growth of the city of College Station. It's the extreme growth of Texas A&M University, and in my opinion, the fact that student housing at Texas A&M University has not kept up with the growth in student population.”
Jonathan Meer, an economics professor at A&M, referred to noise and street parking concerns as valid reasons for restricting occupancy but predicted that the law would accentuate the need for affordable housing.