The Boston Student Housing Crisis

337 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The Boston City Council passed two ordinances in August and October of 2025 with the goals of combating the growing housing crisis in Boston. The first included changes to the university accountability ordinance over the summer, meant to increase data collection about off-campus student housing for Boston colleges and universities. The second ordinance, passed unanimously on October 8th, 2025, was focused on prioritizing flipping vacant and abandoned buildings into residential properties. 

One of the main drivers of Boston’s growing housing crisis is the presence of numerous higher education institutions in the city, which subsequently increases the demand and cost of housing units, as more students require housing, this creates a further shortage of housing units as the demand far outweighs the available supply.

There are 36 colleges and universities within the city of Boston—4 public and 32 private—making Boston one of the world’s capitals of higher education. With the dense population of students living in the city, student housing has long been an issue for Boston. 

Data from the city government shows that undergraduate enrollment in colleges and universities in Boston has been steadily increasing since 2016, excluding a drop in 2020, which is thought to be due to COVID-19. From 2013 to 2024, there was an increase of 17,666, or 12.2%, in total students at higher education institutions in Boston.

The rise in students in Boston has also brought a need for more housing for these students. Schools in Boston, including Northeastern University and Simmons University, as well as others, have added more than 6,000 dorm beds in the past 10 years, but these have not been enough of an addition to keep up with the increase in students. Data is showing a trend of students choosing to live off-campus, in apartments not-affiliated with their school. 

Many students at higher education institutions, in both undergraduate and graduate programs, choose to live off campus at some point in their education. As of 2024, about 40% of students in Boston live in off-campus private housing, according to the 2024 Boston Housing report. This translates to about 39,012 students living in off-campus housing, increasing the demand on local rental housing markets. Specifically, students are occupying single-family, two-family, three-family, and condo housing units in the Fenway, Kenmore, Allston, Longwood, Mission Hill, and Fenway neighborhoods, areas which are popular among Boston-area college students.

One of the main points of the university accountability ordinance has to do with data reporting. Colleges and universities in the city of Boston are required to file a University Accountability Report every year detailing where their students are living, both on and off campus. This data helps the city understand the need for off-campus housing from students, which impacts housing in the city in general. 

In past years, the student data reporting deadline for schools in Boston was due on October 1st. In the August ordinance, the committee decided to move the date back one month—to November 1st—to allow more time to collect more accurate data. The ordinance also requires the Housing and Community Development Committee of the Boston City Council to hold an annual hearing on the report to discuss the impact of off-campus student housing on the city's housing market. 

The main point of the second ordinance is to create affordable housing properties out of vacant properties across the city. Lead sponsor and City Council President, Ruthzee Louijuene, said the “ordinance is about reimagining public assets as part of the solution, ensuring that when municipal properties are no longer needed for city operations, they’re repurposed transparently and thoughtfully to create affordable housing and strengthen our neighborhoods.” Although this ordinance does not directly mention student housing, that plays a large part in the housing affordability crisis. 

“[Landlords are] going to raise their rent based on that, knowing that the students need housing, knowing that universities don't provide enough dorms, so it's going to drive up the rent of everybody in the area," said Antonio Ennis, a Dorchester community organizer at City Life/Vida Urbana, a non-profit community organization in Boston fighting for racial, social, and economic justice and gender equality, through empowering the working-class. 

Students moving off-campus creates a lack of available housing and drives up  the prices of housing because of the inflated demand. The competition of students moving off-campus into apartments in the city can price and push residents out. The ordinance is an attempt to increase housing, to lessen the impact of students moving off-campus. 

81% of Bostonians say city officials need to take action to increase housing supply, to help make more affordable housing available, according to a study conducted by Abundant Housing Massachusetts and MassInc Polling Group. “The results of this poll show just how much residents agree that Boston has become far too expensive for everyone who lives in the city,” said Jesse Kanson-Benanav, executive director of Abundant Housing Massachusetts, a nonprofit organization advocating for more housing across Massachusetts. 

Current Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is a vocal advocate of  the Boston Housing Strategy 2025, which lays out new housing policies and programs that strive  to make housing in Boston  more available and affordable for families, seniors, students, and workers in the city. In her report, she recommended allocating  roughly $64.2 million in funding to go towards creating more income-restricted housing units in Allston, Chinatown/the South End, Dorchester, Fenway, Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill, Mattapan, Roxbury, and other parts of the city with high housing demands. She has also announced that Boston's Residential Conversion Program, with goals of addressing the housing crisis by creating new units and revitalizing downtown areas, will be open to universities to help convert commercial spaces into dorms to try to alleviate some of the housing rental market pressure. 

The city of Boston is home to a large concentration of colleges and universities, creating a significant demand for both on-campus and off-campus student housing. Some schools, such as Boston University, guarantee housing on campus for all four years for undergraduate students. But other schools, such as Emerson, Northeastern, and Suffolk, do not guarantee housing for all four years, meaning more students move off campus after their first year. Even if on-campus housing is available, many students still choose to live off-campus. To combat the already existing housing crisis caused by an abundant surplus of students, the Boston City Council has passed two ordinances to tackle this issue by improving data collection on student housing and increasing housing construction.