The perpetual problem of housing at the University of New Hampshire is now affecting the residents of the Forest Park apartments.

Forest Park is designed to house families at the university and is populated predominantly by graduate students, many of them international students. Faced with an increase in their rent and a dwindling number of university-provided family housing units, the residents have organized a community picnic and forum to be held Saturday, July 29, at 1 p.m. at Forest Park.

“It’s meant to be a community-building event, but it’s also meant to raise awareness about the dire situation that Forest Park residents are facing,” says Derek Price, one of the event’s organizers.

The addition of fire sprinklers to Forest Park, the increase of energy prices and general upkeep have contributed to a raise in rent of 11.75 percent, according to university spokesperson Kim Billings. Billings also notes that there has not been a significant increase in rent rates for the past 20 years. Rents depend upon the size of the unit. With the rent increase, a two-bedroom apartment will cost $848 each month. This increase could spell trouble for graduate students living in Forest Park, who get by on university stipends, typically $1,000 each month.

Forest Park is the only family housing provided by the university. In addition to the rent raise, a portion of Forest Park has been demolished to make way for additional undergraduate housing. Fifty of the formerly 150 units were demolished within the past few weeks. In place of these family units, UNH is constructing three new undergraduate halls that will house approximately 730 students, according to director of campus planning Doug Bencks.

The original plan was to shift 400 undergraduates from the Woodside apartments to the recently completed Gables complex. The Woodside apartments would have then been converted into 100 family units, meaning an overall gain of 50 family units, once the loss at Forest Park was taken into account.

However, due to an unexpected number of incoming freshmen, Woodside will remain undergraduate housing.
“We’ve been scrambling,” says Bencks. “The decision about when to convert Woodside into family housing, as originally intended, has not been made. My hope is that it will happen within the next year.”

Two of the new dorms on the Forest Park lot are scheduled to be completed by Fall 2007.

Bencks says that an increase in family housing on campus is an important part of the University master plan.

“That will help the research programs; it will attract graduate students; and it will help undergrad students with families and junior faculty,” he says.

As for current Forest Park residents, they have been offered some relief. The University will provide special housing grants to current graduate student Forest Park residents. This additional funding will bring the rent increase down to 3 percent from the original 11.75 percent. With these grants, a two-bedroom apartment will cost $782 a month.

“It’s a Band-Aid fix,” says Laurie Milne, a Forest Park resident who has helped organize the residents. “It’s helping people for the initial moment, but it’s not addressing the bigger issue that it’s still not affordable.” Milne points out that, in addition to not being offered to new residents at Forest Park, the grants are not ensured for the 2007-2008 academic year. Milne, a social work graduate student who has lived in Forest Park with her three children for the past three years, was one of the many residents who signed a petition, pledging not to sign their leases until the University addressed the rent issue. When the University offered housing grants, it made them conditional upon the tenants’ signing their leases by July 15. Milne hopes the picnic will bring more attention to the Forest Park residents’ situation, and also bring them together as a community.

“Right now morale is really low,” she says. “We felt cornered into signing the lease agreement by the July 15 deadline. We’ve been working hard as residents and a community to fight for our rights and to let people know what’s happening here. We’re going to have to continue to work to find a long-term solution for the issue.”

Billings says there are still other areas of graduate student education the University needs to address, such as the limited availability of stipends and health insurance for international students.

“Forest Park has been an issue for us this summer,” she says, “but it’s really shined a light on the bigger picture.”