Housing for the down and out-of-luck

In addition to the stress of studying Organic Chemistry and Finance, Penn students must also find a place to live.

For a number of students, the process is something of an ordeal.

“I can’t complain about the result, but the process itself is terrible,” Wharton sophomore Daniel Ortiz said.

Ortiz — who currently lives in Harrison College House — was placed in his room by random assignment, the last round of on-campus housing. He was not assigned a room through the Community Living and Inter-House Room Change rounds.

“There are so many things you need to consider — people going abroad, boys and girls, even numbers — it shouldn’t be that hard,” Ortiz said.

The Department of Residential Services has several rounds of room assignments where students are given rooms through a lottery system. While freshmen are required to live on-campus, housing is not guaranteed for upperclassmen, although “space is generally available on-campus if students are flexible in their room type choices,” according to the Residential Service website.

When students don’t receive their ideal accommodations, they usually turn to off-campus options. However, off-campus choices may prove to be just as difficult.

By the time on-campus housing rounds are finished, there are no good off-campus options left, College sophomore Langston Varnadore said. The options that are left may be too far from campus or not well-kept, he added.

Varnadore applied for Community Living but was not assigned a room. He chose not to stay on the waitlist because sometimes “you can find out about the waitlist after you leave school [in May], which can be really stressful.”

Currently a resident of the Hub, located at 39th and Chestnut streets, Varnadore said he is ultimately happy with his housing situation.

“Living on Chestnut is kind of weird because nothing happens on Chestnut” since it is on the perimeter of campus, he said.

But for Ortiz, the overall housing process “was more stressful than it needed to be,” he said.

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