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Tucson’s 15.9% rental vacancy rate: Mini-dorms in a sick housing market

by on Aug. 07, 2011, under Arizona, Capitalism, economy, education, Historic architecture, Politics, Tucson

Each August Tucson– like college towns nationwide– sees a flurry of activity as students move back to town and scramble to find lodging.

In recent years, local mini-dorm developers have gone wild– buying up cheap houses (thanks to record foreclosures and a glut of houses for sale), unceremoniously leveling the said houses, and constructing mini-dorms– the scurge of Tucson’s University-area neighborhoods.

This year– with a 15.9 percent rental vacancy rate– Tucson is a renters’ market. For rent signs abound. Good for students and other renters. Not so good for landlords and mini-dorm developers.

Back in April, I pondered the fate of the mini-dorm market– given dramatic hikes in tuition at The University of Arizona. Tucson’s recent designation as the “sickest housing market in the US”, its recent designation as the most impoverished city in the Sunbelt, and its glut of unrented rentals make my question even more poignant: Will mini-dorms become empty monuments to greed?

How much you wanna bet that mini-dorm developers Michael Goodman and Richard Studwell try to sell these architectural behemoths to the city when they can’t rent them?

CREDIT: Pamela Powers
CAPTION: Mini-dorms gobble up historic Tucson

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 7th, 2011 at 4:14 am and is filed under Arizona, Capitalism, economy, education, Historic architecture, Politics, Tucson. Tags for this post: , , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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The Tucson Progressive

Pamela Powers Hannley writes the Tucson Progressive blog on the TucsonCitizen.com and contributes articles to the Huffington Post and Salon.com. She has had more than 30 years of experience in written, visual, and electronic communication—including freelance writing, photography, graphic design, and consulting. In addition to blogging for the Citizen, she is the Managing Editor of an international medical research journal.

Hannley has authored medical research articles, print magazine and newspaper stories, and numerous cancer prevention and self-help publications.

She has been a blogger since 2006, joined the ranks of Tucson Citizen bloggers in October 2010, and started contributing to the Huffington Post in 2011 and to Salon.com in 2012.

Hannley holds a masters’ degree in public health from The University of Arizona and a bachelors’ degree in journalism from The Ohio State University. She is a native of Amherst, Ohio but has lived in Tucson since 1981.