Living Options

Students must consider multiple factors when seeking off-campus homes.

Living away from home is a perk for many who attend a four-year institution. After years of living with their families, students get to experience life on their own in dormitories and create new homes for themselves while taking classes, getting involved in extracurricular activities and making new friends.

For many Temple students, the next big step is to move from the Main Campus residence halls to the off-campus housing opportunities available in the nearby area and Philadelphia at-large.

It is understandable that students would want to take the next step beyond residence halls and create a stronger sense of home. To do so in a way that does not cause financial or mental stress, students must be careful when looking for off-campus housing and seek the necessary resources available to them through the Office of Off-Campus Housing.

Temple’s former commuter-school image is a thing of the past; in the last decade, the university’s enrollment increased from 19,566 undergraduates in 2001 to 27,047 in 2009.

As a result of the mass numbers of students living off campus, realtors and developers are increasingly buying, building and renovating off-campus housing to keep up with the student housing market. Realty companies – such as TempleTown, which owns about 300 properties in the area surrounding Main Campus – offer a variety of housing options, giving students more freedom while allowing them to stay close to Main Campus.

While students are willing to pay the price tag for these off-campus living freedoms, community members who have lived here beyond the four-to-five-year Temple experience are not.

In “Housing Stirs Development,” Page 1, several community members said they felt landlords and realty companies who raise rent are not only being unfair to students, but also to community members who cannot afford to live in the neighborhood they have known for years.

The Temple News reminds students that, although nearby housing is convenient, students are not limited to North Philadelphia. There are neighborhood pockets all across Philadelphia, and students should take advantage of the opportunities to explore the city.