Professors Feel Housing Crunch

Being able to offer spacious and affordable housing in Manhattan is one of Columbia University's biggest selling points to prospective faculty members. But the way in which housing has been allocated in the past, and the dearth of new housing developments in the future, will likely constrain the University's housing options.

According to a memo issued in May 2006 by Provost Alan Brinkley, the head of the Housing Priorities Committee, the University offers its faculty over 3,600 apartments in Morningside Heights. In the last few years, it has added nearly 500 apartments to its holdings. Now, those units are full, and the University does not anticipate adding any more in the near future, rendering unclear how additions to the university faculty will be accommodated.

"The housing crunch is so bad that they no longer offer housing to administrators," said Peter Awn, dean of the School of General Studies.

Ultimately, the Housing Priorities Committee decides what housing is offered to whom. Brinkley's memo states: "Our first priority is to provide housing to newly-hired professorial-rank faculty. Within that group, we give highest priority to those whose recruitment is considered by the deans to be most critical to the plans of their schools."

Professor Jeffrey Gordon, a member of the University Senate committee on facilities, said that the "availability of good housing is a critical element in hiring new faculty." He added, "People don't come or stay because of housing, but it is part of the whole package which affects things."

Sheldon Pollock, a prominent Sanskrit scholar and chair of the Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department, was hired last year and benefited from the policy, scoring a spacious apartment overlooking Riverside Drive and the Hudson River.

Others enjoy similar benefits.

Michael Golston, assistant professor of English and comparative literature, was hired in 2002. "I was offered housing as part of the job description, as I remember it," he said. "I think we got a good deal, given the cost of apartments on the Upper West Side."

While Columbia promises some new hires housing, others are given specific apartments and the opportunity to look them over before signing contracts.

The provost's memo also specifies that apartments assigned to faculty members who retired before 1989 are theirs for the remainder of their lives, or for the remainder of the lives of any surviving spouses. With those spaces filled, incoming professors or professors who wish to change residences have fewer options.

"The University added to their supply of housing over a relatively short period of time, but those [apartments] are all now filled and no new structures are planned because of expense," Gordon said. "The University has finite resources."

Because housing is at such a premium, faculty requests to change housing are only achieved with difficulty. The provost's memo states that "faculty who wish to transfer within the system are eligible to do so, but they receive a lower priority."

Professor of Arabic George Saliba, who has lived in the same apartment since he came to the University 30 years ago, said that he is satisfied with his housing. If he wanted to change, however, "I don't think that I could find another place," he said. "I'd have to go on the waiting list."