NYU To Start Housing College Students And Senior Citizens Under The Same Roof

LifeOfaReilly9 years ago

College! No Parents! Woo-hoo!

Not so fast, New York University students. You might not be in the clear of adult supervision after all.

According to The New York Post, NYU will initiate a trial program that will house students with senior citizens in an effort to offer more affordable housing options on campus.

“In response to soaring housing costs, NYU is rolling out a pilot program in the fall that would let students live in the spare bedrooms of local senior citizens.

“We are extremely enthusiastic about the program,” said Ellen Schall, chair of NYU’s Affordability Steering Committee. “The cost of housing is a significant challenge for many students.”

Students who opt in to the “home stay” program would slice their $14,000-per-year housing bill in half. The initial program will consist of 10 mature juniors, seniors or grad students. Under the plan, cash-strapped students will get a break on rent, and seniors will get extra cash.

NYU will partner with University Settlement, a Lower East Side nonprofit that provides social services to low-income seniors.”

For anyone unaware, NYU costs a whopping $65,000 annually, making it the third most expensive college in the country.

Before we start feeling sympathy for these poor students’ future credit lines, know that NYU is notoriously known as the playground for some of the world’s wealthiest children. Money might not by happiness, but it can sure buy a college admission and then pay for the ensuing tuition as well as some cronuts or whatever the hell New Yorkers are eating these days.

How do you integrate a trust fund baby to the real world? Bunk them up with a low income senior citizen who probably spent a fare portion of their life sleeping among the sewer rats of NYC. That’s how. Get a top flight academic education by day and come home to have your roommate give a lesson of life on the streets at night. They’ll teach you how to apply analgesic creams, what it was like when the war ended, and the proper method by which to poke a dead body with a stick. You can’t put a price tag on that.

How about the landlord that gets to collect social security checks for rent from one tenant and charge an American Express Black Card for the other? Only in America.

Any student that is deemed “mature” enough by the University to be paired up to live with a senior citizen just isn’t experiencing college right. There will be a time and place later in your life to take care of your elders who can’t quite make it to the bathroom on time, but college is not one of them. Well, okay, you will probably still experience plenty of that in college, but from people a fraction of the age. Regardless, get those Ensure bottles out of the fridge and live, dammit!

In all seriousness, if NYU actually wanted to take the initiative in lowering the overall financial burden for their students, they could, oh, I don’t know… LOWER THE PRICE OF TUITION?!?

NYU pairing up with a nonprofit low income senior housing organization just screams that a tax loophole of sorts is in the works. Nobody charging 18-22 year olds 65k a year does something out of the goodness of their hearts. I’m not buying this attempt to do right for all parties involved.

Somebody is benefiting from this and it certainly isn’t the students who will have to worry about stepping on dentures when they walk in the door..

[via The New York Post]

Image via Shutterstock