Carolina Housing relocates students to accommodate incoming first-year class

On June 28, students living in Craige North and Hardin residence halls for the 2024-25 year received an email from Carolina Housing informing them that the third floor of Craige North would be converted into first-year housing.

In its email, Carolina Housing requested approximately 30 volunteers from the two dorms to relocate to other halls in order to accommodate for the "unexpectedly large" incoming first-year class arriving in the fall. 

Carolina Housing wrote that the Ram Village, Carmichael, Morrison, Joyner, Connor, Teague and McIver residence halls had some vacancies available for students willing to relocate. 

The email also said that there were some other on-campus options available, however, Carolina Housing might not be able to accommodate a roommate pair. Additionally, a cancelation penalty waiver for residents who would prefer to cancel their on-campus housing was offered and is available until July 12 at 8 a.m.

If any of the third floor Craige North or Hardin residents wished to relocate, Housing wrote that they would have to indicate so by July 8 at noon, adding that if it did not hear from the approximately 30 volunteers, it would use a random lottery to reassign currently-designated students.

Escher Hutton, a rising sophomore at the University, was assigned to live in Hardin this school year. They expressed concerns about the impact of Housing’s course of action on students who went through a difficult application and waitlist process to live on campus.

“I don't think it’s fair to those students who have been making these plans and arrangements, to change it so soon before the beginning of the school year due to an oversight on the school’s part,” Hutton wrote in a statement to The Daily Tar Heel.

In an email to impacted students on July 3, Carolina Housing said that they received the necessary amount of volunteers to complete the consolidation process and that all reassignments have been completed.

In a joint statement to The DTH, Media Relations, Student Affairs Communications and Carolina Housing said that adding the floor of specifically first-year housing would hopefully create "a greater sense of community for the incoming class," writing that the fourth floor of Craige North already houses incoming first-years.

Executive Director of Carolina Housing Allan Blattner said that third-floor Craige North residents who did not elect to relocate to another hall will still have to be reassigned to other floors of the building.

Carolina Housing has had complications in the past, such as in 2022, when undergraduate students found themselves amid housing issues consisting of almost 600 students being placed on a waitlist without a guarantee of housing. In 2023, the housing waitlist for the 2024-25 academic year was — at one point — 1,100 names long, with Blattner saying that the last time he checked, the waitlist was in the low 60s. The once-long waitlist caused some students to explore off-campus options due to housing uncertainty. 

First-years are the only class guaranteed on-campus housing, with the remaining on-campus vacancies left to students with the most class credits, which generally provides upperclassmen the most priority on the housing waitlist.

Sophomores often have the least priority for on-campus housing at UNC. The class makes up the majority of students on the current housing waitlist and are the majority of students being asked to alter their confirmed housing assignment, as Craige North and Hardin Residence Halls are mainly sophomore dorms.

Avery Residence Hall, which contains 230 beds of on-campus housing, is currently uninhabitable due to renovations. The renovations started in May of this year and are set to continue throughout the upcoming academic year. 

In their combined statement, Media Relations, Student Affairs and Carolina Housing wrote that this year’s last-minute relocations were due to a slight class size underestimation and an increase in the number of first-years who wanted to live on the main campus instead of in Granville Towers, a private and full-service housing option at UNC, which is considered on-campus housing for first-years at UNC.

“This is not an unusual process for us to use as this situation occurs from time to time,” the departments wrote.

Blattner said that interim Chancellor Lee Roberts established the Physical Master Plan Working Group, a committee working to determine if UNC needs more on-campus housing. He said that the group may explore possibilities such as building new residence halls.

Blattner also said that between on-campus housing and Granville Towers, there are over 10,000 beds, which house slightly over 50 percent of UNC’s undergraduate population. He said this is a high rate compared to other UNC System schools and Association of American Universities campuses, which typically can only house around 30 percent.

UNC Admissions faculty declined to comment on admissions data until after census day in September, specifically regarding the size of the incoming first-year class. 

Hutton said that as someone who has found housing hard to work with throughout their time at UNC, they think the University should have considered multiple variables more carefully.

“With the closing of dorms for renovation, I think the school should have taken this into account, and with the lack of places for students to stay, the incoming class should stop increasing every year,” Hutton said. “We don’t have enough resources to support them.”

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