Apartment rent hits Reno students hard as housing affordability wanes
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Off-campus student housing apartments are a common choice for many students.
However, they are pricey, ranging from $700 to $1,000 a month — depending on how many roommates a student has. Many students struggle to keep up on payments when they have to go to school full-time and work on the side.
When Reno and Sparks saw population spikes due to the mass migration to this area when the pandemic eased in 2021, rents surged. Student housing was no exception.
“There was a lot of demand [here] for housing in 2021,” said Susy Vasquez, interim executive director for the Nevada State Apartment Association. “And there wasn’t a whole lot of supply because people weren’t moving [out], so people were trying to move into places that just didn’t exist.”
Northern Nevada rental rates sit in line with typical rates nationally, according to Vasquez. In the past four years, Reno’s rents increased at the highest rate among U.S. mid-size cities, and second-highest overall. From 2019 to 2022, the Reno-Sparks metro area saw its median rent jump by just over 36% to $1,624 per month.
Those high rents have put financial stress on lower income groups and full-time university students. The Reno Gazette Journal reached out to some of those students to get a sense of what the struggle to rent in Reno looks like.
MaKenna’s story
In April, after a full day of classes and work, MaKenna Alford, a senior at the University of Nevada, Reno, got an eviction notice. Her account registered an outstanding balance of about $2,000.
Alford, a criminal justice major, has been struggling to scrape by month to month with a hefty rent bill along with a surplus of late fees. Financially, she is drowning.
“You know I’m a student, and I work — so sometimes I struggle,” Alford said. “I’ve been trying to make a payment plan [to help with late fees].”
In November, she reached out to management in an email about paying her bill with a plan to prevent late fees that would ease her struggles. She got no reply.
A few months later, during the spring semester, Alford received an eviction notice. The new management company offered no compromise.
Isabel’s story
Isabel Peñaloza, an international graduate student from Ecuador, lived at the YOUnion apartments, paying roughly $751 for a room in an apartment with four roommates.
She enjoyed the amenities, furnishings and friendly management. With distracting, partying roommates, Peñaloza had trouble finding a quiet place to study.
“I am a person who does not party and studies and goes to university to study,” Peñaloza said. “So I think they don’t have that separation between people that don’t care and people that really care about their studies.”
To find the right space, she had to rent a room for $862 a month with just one roommate –– an extra $100 a month.
Will there be any relief for Reno students and residents?
In the Reno-Sparks area, housing authorities hope for a rent slowdown.
“We’re finally seeing that slowdown that we actually should’ve gone through just before the pandemic,” Vasquez said. “Rents are stabilizing and we’re not seeing the year-over-year growth that we have in 2021 or years prior.”
Currently, there are 4,508 units under construction in Washoe County, according to Vasquez. As more units are added, the NVSAA expects that in 2024 to 2025, the year-over-year growth will drop to 5%, which is significantly lower than what they’ve seen in the last few years.
However, the majority of these units are not specifically for students.
Student housing is mostly reliant on enrollment rates at the university. More students usually means a need for more housing options near campus.
However, enrollment rates in U.S. undergraduate programs have declined by 1.4 million during the pandemic years. UNR has been no exception to this decline. Enrollment numbers there have been at a standstill since the 2019 peak, with barely any increases in the last three years.
Since the university has been seeing slower enrollment rates, demand for student apartments will begin to level out if the enrollment does not rise, according to Brian Bonnenfant, of the Center for Regional Studies at UNR.
As demand levels out and apartment supply increases, competition in the housing market will grow as students look for the most accommodating and affordable choice.
Trading the apartment for a house
Peñaloza later found a house with three roommates for $710 a month — plus utilities.
Financially, she has been in a better position. Peñaloza landed a research job where she gets paid for 40 hours and a scholarship that pays 75% of her tuition.
However, since demand for single-family houses will remain the same — especially for students wanting to live close to the university — and the supply will stay limited, rental houses near campus are expected to have a higher growth in rent than apartments.
Houses, Bonnenfant said, tend to be the top of the food chain as far as options go.
Where’s the cheapest rent for students?
The cheapest apartment option near the campus is at Wolf Run Vintage.
For a student wanting to rent in a six-bedroom, five-bathroom in a building built in 1961, it’s $649 a month per resident, according to Bonnenfant.
Apartments like Wolf Run that have been around longer add incentives, amenities and other benefits to compete with newer options — like Park Place Apartments, Identity Apartments, HERE Reno and the Academy at Reno.
High-end units opening in 2023:Reno gets another luxury apartment project with The Edison near UNR
HERE Reno apartments are expected to open in the fall semester with 636 bed openings, according to Robert Patrick, a student worker at HERE Reno.
The Academy Reno apartments are expected to open for the 2023 school year, with 755 beds being built.
“As you get more supply, [there will] probably be at least a plateau [in rent],” Bonnenfant said. “The competition is going to get fierce.”
As new student apartment housing begins to expand with more beds and better amenities, the market could see drops in prices or at least expansion in incentives and accommodations as students are opened up to more housing options.
Jaedyn Young is an intern reporter who is a junior at the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno.
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