Posted on: Friday, July 23, 2004
Public helping UH with housing for students
By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer
The community is opening its doors — and hearts — to respond to the plight of incoming University of Hawai'i students and help them find housing in the latest dorm crisis that, at last count, has left about 1,200 students without a place to live.
More than 130 individuals with apartments, rooms to rent, condos, houses and other units have responded to the needs by listing their accommodations on the UH Web site for student renters.
And parents are stepping forward to ask the community to pull together to help solve the problem, even as university officials look into whether large operations such as the Convention Center could offer student parking, and if UH shuttle buses could be provided.
"It's a burden on us, but parents on the Mainland are panicking," said Joanne Kagawa, whose 20-year-old daughter Jenelle, a junior, didn't get a dorm space even though she received one last year. "They're making plans to get here and there are no dorms available."
While O'ahu families are figuring out ways to cope — purchase a second car so children can commute, and hope they find parking, or move in temporarily with relatives closer to UH — local families are also concerned about Mainland students who aren't as familiar with the landscape.
"Call in with ideas," suggested Kagawa to the public, after she met with UH chief of staff Sam Callejo yesterday, along with another parent, Shirley Fujimoto, to brainstorm potential solutions.
Kagawa, Fujimoto, Theresa Wee and Lynette Lee are leaders of a fledgling UH Parent Association formed a few months ago by UH Housing director Margit Watts to add support to her "M" Town (Manoa Town) idea to create more of a college community around the dorms.
Coincidentally, they're all well down the waiting list for dorm space and their older, upperclassmen children may not get a space, even when as many as 200 or 300 spaces open up on Monday as the next rental payment comes due.
But these parents are also concerned that if other families begin doing the same thing, it could mean worse traffic jams and more cars.
"We're going to have so many more cars on the road that we didn't plan for," Wee said.
Using the bus isn't as viable an option, Fujimoto said, because so many students have jobs and there isn't necessarily enough time to get to a job right after class if you have to wait for a bus. And the city has told the mothers that more Express buses couldn't be added for the morning commute in from the Waipahu or Waipi'o areas unless there are a guaranteed 500 riders.
UH is also looking into other potential parking in the surrounding area, including Varsity Theater, the Japanese Cultural Center and Church of the Crossroads, which have been used in the past for overflow. Additionally UH is once again looking at allowing parking on the lawn fronting the Laboratory School, as it did during the bus strike last year.
Wee suggests that O'ahu students who don't get dorms be given priority when it comes to new parking. That would ease the issue of going back to living at home, and at least provide a place to put the car at UH.
"My third son (in high school) wants to go away (for school), and maybe he should," Lee said.
Says Fujimoto: "To go to college you have to buy an apartment and a car."
Adds Kagawa: "What are the freshmen this year (who have priority for dorms) going to do next year?"
Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.
Fujimoto, who stays with her 89-year-old father in McCully during the week to care for him, is considering having her daughter live there during the week as well. And Kagawa has dipped into a home equity loan to buy a second-hand Toyota for her daughter so she can commute from 'Aiea if she has to.
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How to list student rentals
Individuals who want to rent living space to University of Hawai'i students may call the Off-Campus Housing Referral Program at 956-7356, e-mail och@hawaii.edu or submit a listing on www.housing.hawaii.edu/och under "Listings for Students."
