Affordable Housing for Jackson Students

The housing crisis also particularly affects students, both in Jackson and in many major cities in the United States where the country’s most prominent universities are located.

Jackson State University, located in the city of Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, has a main campus consisting of 51 buildings that occupy an area of approximately 100 hectares. With more than 9,819 students, this university is the fourth largest higher education institution in the state.

The university, through its administrative staff, offers assistance so that thousands of students can meet their housing and living needs safely and adequately through its housing and residential life program.

As the city of Jackson grows, so does the university population and their housing requests. Due to the multiple requests, the university has now run out of space to accommodate its entire student population in need. To address its housing shortage, the university administration is considering purchasing a vacant hotel located in the city center.

The hotel is part of the Marriott chain and is now for sale for $5.25 million, a price lower than its appraised cadastral value. According to the university president, the primary goal of purchasing the hotel is to have the capacity to provide housing for nearly 500 students and to have space for meetings, parking, and, in turn, generate extra income for the university through rentals.

With the purchase of the Marriott hotel, the university would have the opportunity to address the housing crisis, which has always been a problem for the university administration, said its president. If the project were approved, and after rehabilitating the hotel, in one or two years the university could provide more housing assistance to its students.

Due to the closure of the University Pointe and McAllister Whiteside apartment complexes, the administration had to relocate all its students after discovering that the buildings had mold problems, mechanical, electrical, and utility failures, which caused the delicate housing situation to become even more strained for the university.

Therefore, what the president seeks with this student housing project, if approved, is to remedy the lack of housing and improve the accommodation capacity for local students and those coming from out of state, who represent approximately a quarter of the university’s enrollment.

The president also emphasized that since their student population comes from low-income families and receives federal assistance for tuition, many of them could not secure rentals on their own, much less without the help of the university administration.

The idea of purchasing the hotel to offer affordable housing for students who do not have sufficient resources or aid is well received by the board of directors; however, the only concern generated by the purchase of the hotel is that they are completely unaware of how much the refurbishment repairs would cost. To this, the president responded that the current conditions of the hotel do not require a total repair of the property and that many of the repairs are cosmetic, which would not require the university to use many federal funds.

Available Foreclosures:

Jackson: 12 homes available.

By Elias DaSilva | October 11, 2024.