Visualize student home ownership

This is the first article I wrote referencing the North Side, and the opportunities for students to get out from under the thumb of landlords and own their own housing.

http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2007/12/03/72164819


This is the part of the column which I would like to emphasize, which hasn't exactly been taken up by the University of Minnesota (quite yet)as follows:

"I think our University should help improve the neighborhoods of this city, possibly by helping to arrange creative home financing for students, especially students who are willing to stick around the Twin Cities for a while working on graduate degrees."

Adding to this idea further, here in this blog: I assume such financing would take the shape of low interest loans. One really creative idea might be to find a way for "room and board" to mean "actual rooms, actual boards." Currently, students take out loans for "room and board" and that money is just frittered away on rent and meals. What if there were a way for "room and board" loans to go into EQUITY instead of some landlord's pocket?

And, I might add, students could make meals in their own home more economically than eating out--which is how so many students habitually feed themselves--or dining at University Dining Service, which is an even worse deal. Honestly, you could walk from the Carlson School of Management and get a better deal at two Asian buffets on the West Bank than you could at the dining facility at Carlson.

The same goes for walking to the Indian buffet in the Dinkydome versus eating at UDS facilities on the East Bank of campus.

But I digress. I think one way to help students arrange financing would be to apply "room and board" loans to "actual rooms, actual boards." The University could help students find ways to do this in an aboveboard (tee hee) way.