Service fees are charged to housing developments by the number of units, rather than by the number of bedrooms and bathrooms. Tuscaloosa attorney Bryan Winter, who also represented Core Spaces, said the city currently incentivizes four and five bedrooms for plexes in the way that it handles service fees, which land development projects pay to the city to cover the impact that they have on city infrastructure. Has plans to build a student mega complex called oLiv on 319 Grace St., where the Pride Court apartment complex is currently located. Michael Cartee, a real estate developer from Chicago and a Tuscaloosa lawyer who represented Core Spaces, said the exception for plexes is “fundamentally unfair,” and that plexes cause horizontal sprawl and blight.Ĭore Spaces developed both The Hub and The State student apartments in Tuscaloosa and The moratorium on four- and five-bedroom spaces applies to student mega complexes, but not to duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, townhouses and row houses. The city council also voted 5-2 in favor of an amendment to the city’s zoning ordinance that would bar property developers from building four- and five-bedroom units in future multi-family and student mega complex apartments. Plexes are properties that have two, three, or four, family homes, which typically have shared walls, within one building. Maddox said he believes the city should move away from mega-complexes and focus on the development of more traditional housing, like plexes and townhouses. “Clearly, we have reached that breaking point and we have to walk away.” “The overbuilding of student apartments has not translated to lower prices for students, nor has it translated into any type of affordable housing,” Maddox said. Nearly 60% of renters in Tuscaloosa are cost-burdened, meaning that the cost of their rent is 30% or more of their overall household income.įor the estimated 6,600 retail workers in Tuscaloosa, who make an average annual income of $26,150, the maximum affordable rent is $654. For a one-bedroom apartment, the average rent was $779. The study showed that the average rent for units between three and five bedrooms ranges between $1,000 and $2,605. But with the majority of available units being three, four and five bedrooms, the study indicated that the most widely available type of housing will not meet the price point or style of unit that the majority of potential renters in Tuscaloosa will be looking for.
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“When you purchase the property, it makes more financial sense for the landowner to be 50% full with a student complex than to be 100% full with traditional housing.”Īccording to a five-year affordable housing study commissioned as a part of the city’s Framework initiative, the demand for housing will eventually meet the supply. “With land prices so high, it’s hard not to build vertical,” Maddox said. The HUD study showed that multi-family developments with five or more bedrooms had a vacancy rate of 40%, and multi-family units with between two and four bedrooms had a vacancy rate of 16%. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Tuscaloosa has an overall 4% rental vacancy rate.īut that number is not reflective of the vacancy rates of the larger, multi-family, student-oriented housing in the city, which have much greater vacancy rates. “Since 2011, the University of Alabama has grown by 7,871 students, while in the same time, over 14,000 new apartment bedrooms have been added,” Maddox said in a June press release.Īccording to the U.S. Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox said the proliferation of student mega complexes has created a surplus of beds in Tuscaloosa. “(My) district has been changing remarkably, and gotten ahead of itself in terms of housing,” said Tuscaloosa Councilman Lee Busby, whose District 4 includes the University Residential District.īusby said the aim of the moratorium is to let the demand for housing in his district catch up.
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The decision was but one in a series of ordinances passed recently by the city council that aim to slow the number of new bedrooms being built in the University Residential District and curb the number of new large-scale student housing projects. Student mega complexes are considered apartment buildings of 200 bedrooms or more, with units that typically contain four or five bedrooms each.
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