housing

Grace Bertelli, CC ’21, found herself scrambling for housing options on Sunday morning when she learned she had to vacate her dorm. Members of her family are immunocompromised, so going home could risk exposing them to COVID-19 and endangering their lives.

With canceled classes and postponed exams,, many deadlines are being altered, but housing registration waits for no one. If you are planning on living on campus this year, make sure to keep the following deadlines in mind, so you do not lose your guaranteed housing.

The housing registration period is starting, and as you’re scrambling to figure out where and with whom you’ll be living next year, you might have overlooked that the housing registration process is completely changing this year for Columbia. Housing registration will now be online and there will not be any in-person registration appointments. To help you navigate these changes, Spectrum is here to guide you through the Shaft, which has added new features to adapt to these new rules.

City officials declined to give money to Community Board 9 based on the group’s preliminary budget recommendations for housing and park renovations for the next fiscal year. However, the mayor’s office agreed to allocate money for youth education, which was a financial priority for CB9, a local advisory board representing Morningside Heights and surrounding areas.

Just through the front door of the brownstone at 542 West 114th Street, strings of lights run along the walls of the room on the right, casting a warm glow through the windows and onto the sidewalk below. A print of a Gustav Klimt painting is tacked up above the fireplace, and the room is full of a hodge-podge of furniture. In this front room and throughout the brownstone, residents host club meetings and Friendsgivings, cook alongside each other in the kitchen, and chat over homework. Here, Columbia’s transfer student community has found a home. The residents trade in corridor-style living for a living room shared with neighbors who can relate to their path at Columbia. On a campus where almost every inch of space is claimed before they arrive, here is a house that has been set aside for them—but only for this year.

Senators raised concerns surrounding a lack of available campus housing for graduate students and faculty in light of an expanding student body, specifically citing barriers posed by salary requirements for international students, at Friday’s senate plenary.

The Housing Equity Project (HEP) hosted a paneled town hall on gentrification which incited conversations about Columbia students’ roles in holding Columbia accountable for its Manhattanville expansion, and the impact it has on the community of West Harlem.

Community members of Morningside Heights and surrounding neighborhoods ranked housing as one of their biggest neighborhood concerns for the following fiscal year at a public hearing on Monday.