It’s move-in weekend at the University of Connecticut , but hundreds of students who sought on-campus residency won’t be settling into their dorms after a housing crunch slammed Storrs and Stamford amid record-breaking enrollment .
According to data from the university, at the start of the week, nearly 300 students, including more than 220 freshmen, were on waitlists for housing at UConn’s Storrs and Stamford campuses.
The university offered new and returning students thousands of dollars in tuition discounts, parking passes and free meals in exchange for their coveted on-campus beds. Many turned the incentives down, leaving their less-lucky classmates scrambling to secure off-campus apartments or surrendering to the commute.
“I’ve never been faced with this amount of uncertainty less than three days from the start of a semester,” Francelis Matos Maldonado, a rising senior, said. “There is little to no affordable housing in the area … and am left with the decision to fully withdraw or commute three hours in public transport one way to the university, which is completely unacceptable.”
After spending a year off campus, Matos Maldonado said she filed her on-campus housing application “the exact day it came out,” but on March 27, Matos Maldonado learned that she had been placed on a waitlist. Months later, UConn informed Matos Maldonado on June 12 that “no opportunity” for housing existed for her on campus, according to university emails Matos Maldonado shared with the Courant.
“There are first-year students who are required to live on campus and for whom we do not currently have a space to assign them … as a required student group, we must continue to identify space for these students,” the email read. “We do not want to create a false sense of hope that there will be on-campus housing available for you.”
In a statement to the Courant, University Spokesperson Stephanie Reitz said “UConn received a record number of applications this year and, among those who were offered admission, a record number of first-year students accepted and enrolled for the fall semester.”
According to Reitz, new incoming students make up “UConn’s largest-ever freshman class.”
“All students who accepted enrollment and met the deadline to apply for on-campus housing at Storrs have been accommodated with a room assignment, regardless of whether they were from Connecticut or out of state,” Reitz said. “Students who applied past the deadline have been added to a waiting list. It changes almost daily as some students give up their housing assignments and others are moved off the waiting list and offered those rooms.”
According to copies of emails from July that students shared with the Courant, UConn’s Department of Residential Life offered $2,000 to the first 100 students who agreed to cancel their fall housing. All students who accepted the offer would receive a free commuter parking pass and 25 meal swipes, according to the emails.
In the messages, the department said that if a student receiving need-based aid accepted the $2,000, the award “could reduce the amount of loan aid or other need-based aid available to the student rather than providing additional funding.”
The department said the offers would allow the university “to extend housing to students who live much farther away from the Storrs campus, and to provide the best residential experience for all students,” according to the emails.
“If we attempt to house all students with applications at this time, we will be using undesirable spaces such as lounges, former staff apartments, and many students will likely be assigned with 2 or 3 roommates,” the department said, according to the messages.
One family who spoke to the Courant said their son declined UConn’s $2,000 offer. The family said the student has been assigned to a dorm lounge that the university converted into a four-person room.
An incoming freshman who lives 45 minutes from campus told the Courant they declined a similar offer of a parking pass and meal swipes, sans the $2,000, in June.
Other students said they received offers to upgrade their dorm suite for a university-leased apartment to make more room for underclassmen.
Reitz said UConn reached out to 1,600 new students and 7,400 returning students, asking them to “consider canceling their housing applications” in exchange for incentives.
“Hundreds of students cancel their housing assignments late every year, either because they chose other housing arrangements or are rescinding their enrollment decision. This incentive was meant to accelerate a process that already happens annually, and thereby help reduce the waiting list more quickly,” Reitz said.
Daniel Bokshan, a rising junior at Storrs, said “the value of the trade is terrible.”
“There’s no housing on campus and housing off campus is extremely expensive,” Bokshan, who turned down the $2,000 offer, said.
Bokshan described what he views as an “over admittance of students” as “irresponsible,” “greedy” and the source of UConn’s “major housing issues.”
In her statement to the Courant, Reitz credited UConn’s record-setting enrollment as “a testament to UConn’s reputation for stellar academics, vibrant campuses, and research opportunities available to its students.”
Ahead of the university’s official student census, Reitz said UConn expects total enrollment at Storrs to hit 19,800 this fall. Last year, the number of Storrs students was 19,388.
The bulk of the rise comes from UConn’s growing freshman class. Reitz said UConn projects 4,500 new freshmen at Storrs — an increase of more than 7% from the previous class of 4,189. At the Stamford campus, Reitz said UConn anticipates 950 freshmen, up 52% from 622 last fall.
To keep up with increasing enrollment, Reitz said UConn Storrs added more than 820 beds this semester through the opening of Connecticut Hall , new university-leased apartments at the Oaks , and the conversion of lounges into living spaces. In Stamford, the number of beds is up 197 from last year.
In total, the fall housing capacity is 13,317 at Storrs and 677 at Stamford, according to Reitz.
Reitz said UConn adapted lounges into four-person rooms during the Fall 2023 semester. She said the rooms, which “are vetted to ensure they meet requirements for adequate living space, egress, furnishings, and other health and safety measures,” continue to be used as dorms.
Reitz added that “many students” say “they are happy to be accommodated on campus despite being assigned to these nontraditional spaces, and that they and their peers understand the need.”
When asked if UConn plans to increase its on-campus housing in the coming semesters, Reitz said “It’s too early to forecast the housing needs for fall 2025, since demand will depend on many factors that aren’t yet known.”
“Due to a variety of factors, it can be difficult to pinpoint demand from one year to the next until the university learns how many students commit to enrollment, how many of those wish to live on campus, and how many meet the deadline to apply for housing assignments,” Reitz said. “Given the larger-than-expected number of students who accepted the university’s enrollment offers this spring, planning has been underway with those needs in mind.”
Rising senior Lucy Lyttle said her “first wake-up call to the reality that the administration was scrambling” came last November when the university released, then retracted a policy that would have reduced UConn’s on-campus housing guarantee from eight semesters to six.
According to the university’s 2024-2025 Housing Contract , students who meet application deadlines and do not forfeit their housing are still guaranteed eight semesters, or four years, on-campus. It also states that “First time, first year students admitted for Fall 2024 are required to live on-campus for the 2024-2025 academic year.”
While not written in the contract, a frequently asked questions page on UConn’s Residential Life website states that “Students entering as freshmen (admitted with housing) are guaranteed four semesters of housing” and that “On-campus housing is not guaranteed for four years.”
In her time living at the Storrs campus, Lyttle said she could not “recall any big issues when it came to housing” before this year.
“I think the whole situation really just reflects a lack of care from the administration,” Lyttle said. “Surely they were aware while they were admitting students that they would struggle to house them all, but they did it anyway. Why?”
“They expected that everyone else would bend over backwards and give up the housing they were promised to fix their mistakes. And that expectation was, obviously, proven incorrect,” Lyttle added.
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