“We Truly Appreciate Your Flexibility”

Breaking down Columbia’s housing shuffle.

By Erica Lee 

Illustration by Jacqueline Subkhanberdina

On the evening of June 30, nearly 160 School of General Studies students opened their inboxes to a puzzling email from Columbia Residential: their residence halls were “no longer available” for the coming school year, with no explanation given. Across the city and the world, Fairholm and Nuss leaseholders were texting and calling frantically. 

Every student living in 503 W. 121st Street, also called Fairholm, and floors one, six, seven, 11, and 12 of 600 W. 113th Street, commonly called Nuss, had to vacate their rooms by July 25, in just under a month. The Fairholm group chat blew up with rumors of relocation to Columbia Residential units in the Bronx and debates about the legality of the housing change. Students tried to call the Columbia Residential office, but it had closed at 5 p.m., three minutes after the email was sent. 

“We understand that this is not the news you expected, and we truly appreciate your flexibility,” the email read. By nightfall, the administrative memo had sparked a communal emergency.

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The email offered students two options for new housing: transferring into another Columbia Residential unit or finding off-campus housing. If students decided to transfer into another Columbia Residential unit, they would receive a housing offer aligned with their housing preferences (suitemate gender, single/double, etc.), but they would have to pay the rate they were paying for their original housing. If they decided to find new accommodations, they would only have a few weeks to find an apartment. 

 A former Nuss resident walked me through how she and her roommate weighed the dilemma. “We were paying the highest bracket of rent with Columbia Residential,” she said. “So we were either going to get something on par with our current apartment or worse. There’s no way that we would be upgraded in any way. Also, because we’re getting this email at the beginning of July, the housing period has already ended, so all of the accommodation that’s going to be left is what nobody chose.” Francesca Gilbard, GS/Sciences Po ‘26, had loved the community of dual degree students she had found at Fairholm, but still, she filled out the housing relocation form for Columbia Residential immediately after receiving the email. “The second option never really made sense to me because you have two weeks to find housing in New York City. Good luck,” she said.

To make matters worse, many of the evictees were across the country and around the world when the email dropped. GS, specifically its dual degree programs, attracts a large number of international students who had to manage time differences and the challenges of digital communication amid the evictions. One former Nuss resident was in Germany, and her parents came into the city to look for apartments, while she made a contingency agreement with other students to break their leases and move in together if they were all placed in the Bronx. Another former Fairholm resident, who had lived in the building for three years, was in Chile and had a subletter in his apartment. Due to the moving inconvenience and housing changes, the original sublease agreement was ultimately only partially fulfilled. “I’m curious to know who was in charge of this,” he said, explaining that he wouldn’t expect such abrupt changes from the Columbia administration. He recalled how Dean Griffiths, the GS Dean of Student Affairs and Wellbeing, tried to help students out of the country get extensions on the move out date. Residential didn’t budge. 

Of the four students I spoke with one-on-one, two recounted times they spontaneously cried from the stress and uncertainty of the process. For those staying in Columbia Residential, there was no exact date when they could expect their new unit assignments. The pressure continued through the move, as students dissatisfied with their housing were unusually blocked from direct transfer to open units until October. Others were incorrectly billed for the summer, leading to financial holds and preventing course registration, and their disability accommodations were denied because the notice of lease termination arrived after the June 1 deadlines outlined in Columbia’s Disability Housing Accommodations Procedures & Guidelines. Students were each promised five boxes for their belongings, which they could either pack themselves for the movers or leave for movers to pack. Several students lost belongings in the move. 

For all this chaos,  the University compensated them with 25 meal swipes. But as the summer dragged on, no one could answer the question: Why were these students being moved?

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Months without an explanation from Columbia Residential, some GS students finally learned about Fairholm’s second life in an unconventional way—by watching Instagram Reels. “Columbia posted on move-in day, and it was literally CC kids moving in, and people were cheering,” one former Fairholm resident recalled. “They didn’t even tell us it was being repurposed. They just said, ‘We need to rebalance the needs of our student community,’ or whatever.”

Transfer and Combined Plan students in CC and SEAS submitted their fall housing forms by July 15, ranking residence halls and completing living preference questionnaires. In August, many were assigned to Fairholm—a name that hadn’t been on the list of available residence halls. What had been active GS housing only one month ago now houses the Combined Plan and Transfer Student community.

The evicted students’ Columbia Residential units had been bought by Columbia Housing. While the names are deceptively similar, these organizations serve different communities: Columbia Housing provides guaranteed housing for eligible students in Columbia College and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Their housing costs a uniform set rate, and comes with front desk security, resident advisors, and residence hall directors. Meanwhile, Columbia Residential serves the rest of the University: General Studies students, faculty, staff, graduate students, and postdoctoral students who pay on a tiered rent system according to their accommodation, without the frills of security and residence hall staff—closer to an actual apartment than college dorm. 

Nuss had already been a Columbia Housing residence hall for years. The building had been split between Columbia Housing, Columbia Residential, and some outlying owners, so it could transition to Columbia Housing units fairly seamlessly. But Fairholm was an odd case, suddenly under the purview of the East Campus residence hall director and assigned all new RAs and security guards late into the summer. By the time transfer students received their housing assignments, there weren’t any Fairholm floor plans online—there still aren’t. Students couldn’t plan their new rooms or move-in process, and when one new resident tried to look up her new building online, she could only locate grainy scans from 1908 and a decade-old Reddit thread describing Fairholm as “the worst dorm ever.” 

When students arrived, it was clear the transition had been rushed. The exterior was wrapped in scaffolding, and construction began a few weeks into the semester and is still ongoing. Some students didn’t have blinds, so construction workers could look directly into their rooms, and other suites didn’t have drawers or cabinets for the first weeks of the semester. Swipe access to the building wasn’t functional at first, and students relied on metal keys that often broke in the locks. Wi-Fi, plumbing, electricity, and laundry issues only added to the moving pains. 

Columbia Housing has undergone major changes this academic year. Hartley Hall, a majority underclassmen residence hall, temporarily closed for renovations, and Wien Hall was offered to first-years for the first time. Simultaneously, the University enrolled its largest class to date for CC and SEAS, 389 additional students from the year prior, a 20.5% increase, and Columbia Housing expanded its portfolio with a new residence hall, 611 W 112th St.,  specifically to accommodate students during construction. However, a Columbia spokesperson denied that the large first-year class was at all related to the evictions this summer or that any staffing changes were necessary. The spokesperson wrote, “Our Residential and Housing teams occasionally adjust housing assignments to balance the needs of the student community. [...] We understand these changes were disruptive and made every effort to minimize their impact. No student lost access to University housing as a result.”

According to a Columbia Residential email to The Blue and White, however, the decision was made solely by “University leadership,” and merely carried out by Columbia Residential and Columbia Housing. While the university claimed that the decision was purely logistical, it was no coincidence that GS students seemed to get the short end of the stick, with transfer students also bearing some of the burden.

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Months without an explanation from Columbia Residential, some GS students finally learned about Fairholm’s second life in an unconventional way—by watching Instagram Reels. “Columbia posted on move-in day, and it was literally CC kids moving in, and people were cheering,” one former Fairholm resident recalled. “They didn’t even tell us it was being repurposed. They just said, ‘We need to rebalance the needs of our student community,’ or whatever.” For many GS students, the unexplained evictions and move-in of CC and SEAS students painted a clear picture of where they stood in the Columbia hierarchy of needs.

On Oct. 14, the General Studies Student Council (GSSC) unanimously adopted the 2025 GSSC Housing Relocation Survey, collecting data and testimonies from 51 impacted students. 96.1% of survey respondents were dissatisfied with the administration’s decision to relocate them, and other complaints in the survey ranged from longer commutes to differences in amenities and light and sound pollution. Above all, the executive summary plainly stated, “Some of the major recurring themes in those testimonials were feelings that GS students were treated disrespectfully by administration on the basis of their school.” In a survey testimony, Sydney Durkin, GS ’26, wrote, “As a GS senior, it’s not the first time I’ve felt like we’ve been the checkbook for CC, but it left a sour taste in my mouth.”

Eight days later, GSSC President Oscar Wolfe, GS/JTS ’27, met with GS administrators, including Dean Rosen-Metsch, to discuss the survey. Shortly thereafter, on Oct. 23, Acting University President Claire Shipman formally apologized for the changes in an email forwarded to the impacted GS students, nodding to the interschool tensions by writing, “We should have been more clear and more forthcoming with details. As you are likely now aware, students across all three undergraduate schools experienced housing reassignments.” 

The email specifically called out Columbia’s plans to open its first residence hall dedicated to GS students as a symbol of the University’s respect for the school. Announced in 2024, this residence hall would address many of the concerns shared by GS students about age gaps with graduate student roommates and isolation from the GS community. Shipman wrote, “I hope you see the University’s investment in the newly renovated residence hall for GS students, set open in the fall of 2026, as evidence our firm commitment to supporting GS students and their housing needs.” 

Where this new dorm could be remains unclear, but the housing shuffle of this past summer reveals key issues in housing scarcity between Columbia Housing and Columbia Residential. Columbia Residential only provides guaranteed housing to dual and joint degree program General Studies, many of whom were evicted from Fairholm and Nuss. By moving housing-guaranteed GS students without expanding its portfolio, Columbia Housing only decreased the number of housing options for other Columbia Residential leaseholders. Graduate students already do not have guaranteed housing due to the limited number of Columbia Residential units, and GS students have similarly complained of housing scarcity, as highlighted by a 2024 GSSC survey. A new building will likely force further expansion into West Harlem—a whole other can of worms. 

Three months later, the chaos of the housing shuffle has settled into something quieter. Students have moved into their new units, and Shipman’s retroactive apology was appreciated but ultimately just a gesture. The June relocations were justified as a community necessity, but to the students who were forced to pack up their lives in less than a month, it felt like something more symbolic—a reminder of an undergraduate hierarchy made tangible in emails, boxes, and meal swipes.