Student Housing Overbuilt

In the ongoing issue of affordable housing in Champaign and Urbana, there never seems to be a shortage of new expensive student housing projects. The News-Gazette highlights the issue today:

Construction underway on another Campustown apartment complex
A Rhode Island developer is building a seven-story, 538-bed luxury apartment building near Campustown that it hopes to open in the summer of 2019.

Meanwhile, local developers with student housing projects nearby are worried the market is oversaturated, with Gilbane Development Co.'s project just the latest in a long line of others like it.

"The market's overbuilt. Anybody with half a brain can see that, so you got to pick and choose your spaces really carefully," said Dan Hamelberg, developer of the Midtown Plaza, which has 104 units...

"We're seeing the tail end of a lot of this," Saunders said. "We have a few more projects scheduled, but I think there's not a lot of available land. There might continue to be some smaller projects."

Hamelberg said local developers are starting to slow things down.

"Local developers and local banks know what's going on," he said. "The time has come for people who are outside of our market to realize that we have a vacancy rate, and it will go higher if you come in with a couple hundred more units."

While Hamelberg thinks there are too many apartments right now, he's still optimistic about the market, as UI enrollment keeps growing.

"We'll get through this, and we've been through these waves before," he said. "With the University of Illinois growing ... over time, the supply-and-demand curve will fall back in line."

More at the full article here with various details on the luxury apartments recently and planning to be built. It's worth mentioning this CU-CitizenAccess article about the housing crisis for low income families in the area, however:

According to data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition in 2017, there are less than 35 affordable and available homes for extremely low income households in Champaign, one of the lowest numbers in Illinois.