Washington State University - Chinook Yearbook (Pullman, WA)

Page 24 text:

tuppw Developers don’t always look at the rules of economics A mix of state-wide demographic trends and local business decisions combined to make a mess of long-term projections for off-campus housing in 1986. Enrollment declined steadily during the first half of the decade after reaching an all-time high of 17,468 in 1980, but the number of pri¬ vate-sector off-campus apart¬ ment units increased. The trend lead to a hous¬ ing surplus, said one Pull¬ man real estate agent. And with enrollment projections continuing to show declines for the rest of the ' 80s, it was expected that rental rates and real estate prices in Pull¬ man would drop, while the number of personal and business bankruptcies increased. Residence halls aren’t the only ones struggling to meet maximum occu¬ pancy. Campus Commons is one of many Pullman complexes with empty units. Gary Fos¬ ter photo Richard Finch, of Wheat- land Realty, said it would be reasonable to say there was a housing surplus in Pullman in 1986. There were some vacancies last year, then we had the decreased enrollment and all those new units. Kenneth Abbey, WSU assistant vice president for finance, told the Regents in January that Pullman was able to accommodate 17,100 students. Spring semester enrollment in 1986 was 15,290, down from 16,138 in the fall. A memo prepared in July 1985 by Glenn Petry, a WSU finance professor, stated the available housing in Pullman increased 4.5 percent, from 7,182 units to 7,508 units, between 1980 and 1985. Four hundred fifty-eight privately-owned housing units, with 1,029 bedrooms, opened in Pullman between September 1980 and Septem¬ ber 1985. Another 85 units opened in Januaiy 1986, making the total of new units in town 543. Of these, 498 opened in 1985, many of them on Mer¬ man and Terre View Drives, where the Cedar Ridge, Meadows and Campus Commons North apartment complexes accounted for 373 units. The 1979-80 academic year is important because it was the year the Pullman popula¬ tion came close to saturating the available housing mar¬ ket. Residence halls had a 100.5 percent occupancy rate during the fall semester of 1979, and Petry said the gen- f eral housing situation then was very tight. Enrollment dropped 7.6 percent between 1980 and 1985, and as the Baby-bust generation (the generation after the Baby-boomers) grew older and reached col¬ lege age, the available pool of college-age students con¬ tinued to shrink. As a result, WSU adminis¬ trators and others were antic¬ ipating continuing drops in enrollment. Academic vice president and provost Albert Yates told the Regents in Jan¬ uary the university was fac¬ ing a precipitous drop in students. Finch, basing his projections on these trends, estimated the univeristy ' s enrollment would drop another 7.9 percent, hitting bottom at 14,861 in 1994. (continued)