It’s pretty cliche for a young, college-educated professional to complain about student loan debt, but there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about the roots of the problem.
As of 2023, the average Gen Z borrower had an outstanding student loan balance of nearly $25,000. Gen Z is more likely to hold student debt than millennials at their age and tend to have higher balances.
It’s not because members of Gen Z are selecting artsy majors or making poor higher education decisions, but because college tuition and campus cost-of-living prices are ballooning.
College costs in Illinois are the highest in the Midwest — well above the national average — so it’s no surprise Illinois ranked No. 1 in the nation for student debt relief applications and seventh in the nation for outstanding student debt balances.
I graduated from the University of Illinois with more than $50,000 in student debt between my parents and me. The kicker? I was an “Illinois commitment” scholarship recipient, meaning for the three years my family qualified for the program, I didn’t have to pay tuition.
So how did I ring up a nearly $50,000 tab? Housing.
The base rate for mandatory freshman dorm housing at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has grown to nearly $15,000 a year.
Off campus, rents range from $450 to $2,000 per month, depending on the location, building quality, utilities and number of roommates. This doesn’t include the cost of groceries, school supplies and other essential purchases a student needs to make to live at the university. Those costs add up — especially considering Illinois has the second-highest cost of living in the Midwest and highest tax burden in the nation, according to WalletHub findings. It’s increasingly expensive to live and go to school in Illinois — meaning students here are forced to rack up higher debt than their peers.
Champaign County comes in about 13th out of 102 counties for most expensive property taxes in Illinois. Property taxes have increased 19% between 2018 and 2022, an increase of about $656 per household, the Illinois Policy Institute reports. These expenses are then directly passed onto tenants as higher rents and are particularly damaging for students relying on student loans or who lack a steady income.
But they aren’t the only students feeling the pinch. It’s affecting the entire campus community.
Last year, the university suffered a housing crisis — there weren’t enough rooms for the newly admitted students. Residential advisers had to bunk with students, and some were forced into off-campus housing. The Daily Illini Editorial Board highlighted that this “puts additional stress on the already competitive housing market, pushing students to live farther and farther from campus. … For the students pushed to the border of Champaign-Urbana, due to limited housing, access to a close bus stop will be hard to come by.”
As each newly admitted class breaks admission records, the financial strain will affect off-campus housing costs: Rents will rise amid growing demand.
The best solution is to build more, faster — without compromising the integrity and identity of the elite public university. Champaign-Urbana has been a seller’s market since 2023, which means there is more housing demand than supply and prices continue to rise. The median home price in Champaign has increased more than 15% in the past year, now listed at $235,589.
So, what can Champaign County do to combat the growing cost and ease the housing burden?
It starts with housing reform. While Champaign-Urbana actually leads the state in new privately owned housing units per 100,000 residents, U.S. census data suggests Champaign and Urbana issued fewer housing permits in recent years. Champaign declined to 3.7 and Urbana to 2.2 permits per 1,000 residents in 2023.
To counter this, Champaign County could implement self-certification for building. This would allow certain construction project categories to be vouched for by a certified architect or structural engineer. They take responsibility for ensuring the project complies with all the city’s building codes.
In Chicago, this program — while far from perfect — reduces the number of days to get a permit from 87 to 10. While Champaign-Urbana has much faster permit turnaround, adopting self-certification could mean even less time waiting for government approval before building, which hopefully would reduce costs and encourage more building.
Champaign-Urbana could also add density and housing by removing minimum lot requirements and raising the maximum height caps on buildings in areas close to the campus’s core. Allowing mixed-use and residential zoning in formerly commercial districts and removing any parking and aesthetic requirements would also help bring down housing costs.
There are quick and workable solutions the Illini community could adopt to ease the growing housing burden — especially for low-income students. Now, it’s up to local lawmakers to adopt common-sense reforms that would continue to allow Champaign to house more of the best and brightest students.
Micky Horstman is the communications associate for the Illinois Policy Institute, a social mobility fellow for Young Voices, former opinion columnist for the Daily Illini and a UIUC 2023 alumnus.
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