Skip to main content

Priced out: Why UW students choose alternative housing

When University of Wisconsin-Madison student Ella Stoltz was considering signing a lease with her friends just a few months into her freshman year, she planned to share her room — a personal sacrifice she believed necessary when faced with an unaffordable rent.

That fall, Stoltz applied for a House Fellow position instead, a decision she made with housing at the front of her mind.

“I think if I was going to a university that had lower tuition and more housing prices, I wouldn’t be a House Fellow,” Stoltz said.