Affordable Student Housing at the University of New Mexico

The housing crisis is forcing students to create new opportunities for themselves.

Since March of 2022, the students of ASHUNM have created apps to connect higher education students in crisis to affordable housing & food, designed self-contained eco-housing units, planned student housing co-operatives, and worked extensively with local mutual-aid organizations - all in an effort to reduce the high rate of student housing insecurity (42%) at UNM.

Past

ASHUNM won at the 2022 CTSC Healthcare Hackathon after presenting the Access Support & Help web-app, a mutual-aid web-application that increases student access to the main determinants of health: food and housing - currently under-construction at www.ashapp.org .

ASHUNM was also a winner at the 2022 Rainforest Innovations Spring Pitch Competition and the 2022 Rainforest Innovations Pitch Deck Competition for an iteration of the web-app: this version of the ASH app is designed to connect healthcare-insecure seniors in the community, with spare rooms, to UNM healthcare students that are housing-insecure; the combination of mutual-aid philosophy and a shared housing model creates affordable housing opportunities for students where none previously existed, and improves the health of seniors to boot.

The program was designed to match housing insecure health science students attending class at UNM North Campus to healthcare insecure seniors that live in surrounding North Campus neighborhoods. The idea came from watching the problem of low income UNM health science students & faculty parking in North Campus neighborhoods because of the high cost of UNM parking; further research conducted by the student team showed that at least 42% of UNM students are housing insecure and 10% are homeless, year after year.

Since then, the leadership of the University of New Mexico sold the last of UNM's family & accessible housing units, with no plans to create affordable student housing. While the costs of on-campus, off-campus & affiliated housing for students continues to rise, the leadership of the United States, New Mexico and Albuquerque continue to ignore the needs of low-income students (to protect real estate investors) by not creating rent hike or eviction moratoriums, violently displacing unhoused students, distributing useless housing vouchers, and funding commercial developers to build condominium developments that have zero units reserved for low-income students.

The individual and community benefit of affordable housing access for students does not require a detailed explanation: if students are not struggling with the obsession & stress of securing sustainable housing they can focus on their studies, graduate on-time, find meaningful employment after graduation, and begin giving back to their community in profound ways.

The intentional lack of commercialization and dedication to sustainability in ASHUNM's not-for-profit design practices have led to funding challenges: contest judges and angel investors continue to struggle with the idea of non-monetary returns on investment; one judge remarked in a pitch competition Q&A "you're not charging enough to provide this [free-to-use] service - it's just not profitable".

Present

The high cost of rent continues to rise, students continue to suffer, and those responsible continue to blame inflation instead of taking accountability: a study conducted by the U.S. Accountability Office estimated that “a $100 increase in median rent was associated with a 9% increase in the estimated homelessness rate". These statistics do not reflect the feelings of anguish and betrayal experienced by students that continue to be abandoned by the institutions (nation, state, city, schools) they are subordinate to, but ASHUNM continues to conduct stakeholder surveys to collect this qualitative data in their efforts to create new affordable housing opportunities for students.

ASHUNM's total funding to date is about $1,800 - which was spent giving one student only one month of housing crisis assistance over the summer. While ASHUNM continues to be contacted by UNM students in crisis, CTSC funding delays for ASH app development are projected until December and the student team does not have enough personal funds to complete the app's beta tests out of pocket, let alone build the self-contained eco-housing prototype or purchase a home for student co-operative conversion.

Since the August 2022 chartering with UNM to be an official on-campus organization, ASHUNM has been approached by dozens of unhoused students seeking crisis assistance. Here are some of the highlights from contacting multiple departments and offices at UNM:

"Unfortunately, [this] Department has no resources available to help with student housing."

"The filing period for housing assistance for the 2022-2023 academic year was last October [2021]."

"The University does not currently offer any emergency housing for students."

"[Here is] a list of [homeless] shelters."

Even the city of Albuquerque's leadership, despite outcry from the community, has continued to fail those victimized by housing discrimination, rent hikes and evictions through their collective inaction.

ASHUNM needs funding NOW to help the 42% of UNM students in crisis achieve housing security - because no one else is going to do it.

Future

"Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty."

- U.S. President Lyndon B Johnson addressing the University of Michigan in 1964

What will student housing look like another sixty years from now? Will higher education institutions still exist? Nothing is certain, but the basic human need for sustainable housing will likely still exist. ASHUNM will continue to work towards a future where affordable student housing is accessible, sustainable, and desirable.

Please call or text ASHUNM at 505-585-1015 or email ashunm@unm.edu for more information.

A Message From the President of ASHUNM

My name is Tony Wallace, I am a UNM student, military veteran, and the founder of ASHUNM. I’ve been working on a solution to housing insecurity since I had to drop out of college in 2007 because of it. It took over a decade to get to a place where I could return to college, and in that time, the cost of housing and healthcare has only increased; technology has advanced in a way that makes real change possible.

Please consider supporting ASHUNM and our student members any way you can.

Thank you.