Housing at UNC is practically Survivor. Every player (student) fends for themselves, splitting alliances (roommate groups) and switching votes (housing selections) at the last minute to make sure they have a better shot at winning a million dollars (a roof over their head). Some lose their votes (housing timeslot) and are left waiting to see if they will be voted off the island (campus).
The Survivor-esque housing process isn’t new for UNC. Last year around 1,000 students were on the waitlist for on-campus housing, which was the tightest fit Carolina Housing had ever dealt with. Every student got off the waitlist, but some had to wait as late as July to find out if they would be placed in an on-campus dorm. Late this November, 1,347 students were on the housing waitlist.
Carolina Housing had plenty of time to solve the trainwreck that was the housing process for the 2024-25 school year. Despite attempted improvements, the housing process for the 2025-26 school year was, somehow, worse.
More than just the lengthy waitlist, many students who did get housing this year were separated from their roommate groups. Being forced to pick a random dorm with a random roommate was practically the only way to ensure having a bed on campus next year. That’s not to say Carolina Housing didn’t somewhat try to make the housing process this year smoother and a little less like Survivor. Their efforts, however, were insufficient at best and harmful at worst.
For the current year, Carolina Housing moved up cancellation deadlines, increased cancellation fees, designated additional sophomore-specific dorms and changed the room selection time slot process to a lottery for all except current and rising seniors. The changes were meant to discourage students from signing up for on-campus housing when they had other housing plans and to ease the disadvantage sophomores faced in housing selection.
The improvements to even the playing field for freshmen did work — if you count making the process equally bad for sophomores and juniors as a success.
It’s hard to say whether increased fees and cancellation deadlines happening sooner changed much about the housing process. It is clear, however, that a $500 cancellation fee to get out of living in a dorm you didn’t want with a person you don’t know, or to remove yourself from an endless waitlist is anything but helpful. An expensive cancellation fee can force students to stay on campus and separate from their friends, increasing stress and unhappiness with Carolina Housing.
Lots of students get off the waitlist in January after RA application results are released and future RA’s are moved into rooms reserved for them. To lower to the increasing number of students on the waitlist every year, the RA application could be moved up or the housing selection time could be pushed back. To help more students get housing with their friends, students entering the housing portal individually could be required to fill gaps in partially full rooms or suites, instead of picking an empty space and taking that area away from a full suite group or roommate pair.
At its core, housing is about community. It’s disappointing to get used to navigating campus and spend time gathering people you want to live with, only for the opportunity to live with them, or on campus at all, to be torn away.
