A: Do you enjoy it?
Well, not exactly. I have my own room now and I pay $750 a month but Conquest is charging $1600 for it next year so...
Wow…..wow. Wow.
So since USC supports Conquest...
No….
Doesn’t USC suggest Conquest on its website?
No. No more than any other landlord.
What does TrojanHousing support as non-university housing options if you do not get guaranteed university housing?
On our website, there’s a link to a site called Housing4students.com And in that Web site, which is run by a third party vendor, at one time there were 340 plus properties…I don’t know the number now. They do a good job keeping up on vacancies. It’s more, “These are all the different apartments that are available in the area that we know of.” It’s not that we’re approving any particular project management company. They all get a list there unless we find out something is unethical or disreputable or illegal. We don’t have any direct control over landlords. But we can go to the third party vendor and say “Look, we’ve heard complaints about this landlord. We want you to investigate it.” And they’ll take on the investigation for us. If they find they have a history of complaints from students they’ll remove the listing. But I don’t know how much it hurts the landlord. We don’t charge the landlords to list. We want as many listings for students as possible. Given the occupancy in this area and throughout Southern California most landlords aren’t going to pay a lot for a listing. The demand side is so strong throughout So Cal it is to their advantage.
Personally, how do you feel about Conquest housing? Has that opinion changed since the recent controversy surrounding Gateway and their feelings of it?
I have mixed feelings about Conquest. Clearly, a fact that they have a large number of beds serves the student population and helps them out. Whether that same number of beds would be there if they weren’t in the market, I don’t know if I have a sense of that. Someone else may be there to fill that.
I’m not particularly pleased with the advertising campaign that they had out there (pictured right) about “Get lucky every night at Conquest Housing” or Tuscany or whatever it was. I just think that’s poor taste. I think students are smarter than that. I don’t think they make where they’re going to live decision based on their libido. They’re more interested in a safe, clean, well-run fairly-priced location. Some of that is subjective—what is fairly priced. As private business people there’s really not much that constrains them from charging whatever the market will bear. I don’t necessarily have to like that but that is the reality of our culture. Well you answered my question concerning the risqué ads on billboards and on Facebook. Which are still floating around the Internet…
I was unaware of that.
Because Conquest is on the USC website and students do hear about it through USC, do you still think its O.K. that you still put them on there even though they’re putting out these risqué ads and also on the Conquest Web site they tell you to bring a good ID to Traddies, meaning bring a fake ID. Is this something USC has tried to ignore?
Because it’s a little more on the behavioral side of things I would probably defer to Student Affairs to respond to that. I don’t think it’s a good idea. I don’t think the university wants students with a fake ID going to Traditions and I think it’s a bad piece of advice, given that conceivably your academic career could be jeopardized if you’re caught and you run afoul of the university policies. That’s not a healthy position to be in. That strikes me as…I can’t imagine having a beer is really worth that. Um, so no I’m not particularly enamored at...I think that’s unfortunate that people take that approach to advertising.
But would there ever be something they would do that would officially force USC to cut its ties to Conquest or because you do want housing for students you have to overlook the behavioral stuff?
Well…it’s not overlook. At some point, very much like when it came to some of the ads on the billboards, the university precluded Conquest from advertising in the D.T. (Daily Trojan) and took some other steps to remove them. I could see where it could potentially come to that down the line again. I’m sure that Conquest’s approach to the Gateway project has not bedeared them to the university.
About Gateway…
Gateway is a project being developed by Urban Partners. And the university is supportive of it from the standpoint that there’s a need for student housing in the area. We’re hearing from students there’s a need. And from the surrounding community that they’re not really pleased that there’s a gentrification going on about the surrounding community. And you can’t solve those two problems without creating more student housing somewhere. The nice thing about Gateway from a university perspective is that if we take university resources to develop student housing then there’s less resources to build administrative buildings or research buildings or academic buildings. So housing doesn’t stand alone from the university. When we use money to build more housing from the university funds then there’s less to use for something else. So by having a third party developer create something adjacent to the campus and who appears to be willing to work with the campus in terms of architectural style and some of those things. Then there could be a good synergy there.
So it is completely separate from the university. Like a Conquest, only Urban Partners?
It will be non-university housing. I think that there would be enough ties there that we’d have to respect their requirement to returning a reasonable profit. I think because of the relationship there I think it would be more collaborative in terms of pricing and how things happened.
If someone came to you looking for off-campus housing what would you give them as advice? What would you tell them?
Well, certainly, we’d tell them they’re guaranteed university housing as a freshman and sophomore but beyond that if someone said “I don’t want to live in university housing, where should I look?” we would give them the gamut. Take a look at the Web site. Mention some of the standard property sites out there—Nupac, Conquest, but we always include in that, because we know some students are interested, downtown locations. There are four or five primary locations students live in downtown— Promenade, Metropolitan, Medici and the Grand. Those are the big ones downtown. And we know some students like it. We can watch the DASH every morning and see students getting on and off. My sense is that’s an older student population. Is that right?
I think it’s anyone that’s willing to commute. There are still some students who like the idea of walking to campus.
I absolutely agree with you. I think the whole concept of being able to walk or ride your bike to campus is a real advantage. And I think the campus has more residential life and more activities going on that make this much more residential in nature than it was even 5 or 10 years ago. I think we’re much more residential in nature than people give us credit for. When you take into account the whole north campus area is all students. You can’t not call us a residential campus.
O.K. Let’s end with Conquest. If you had a son or daughter that wanted to live in Conquest how would you feel about it?
I have a son who goes to school here. He’s a sophomore this year. And I have a daughter who’s gonna be a freshman next year. So it’s a real question. I suspect my son or daughter could get university housing. They still have to pay for it but they could probably get it. I would ask them to make a real hard decision on that. I don’t know if I would absolutely preclude it because part of my responsibility as a parent is to let them make some decisions. But I would counsel them to look real hard at that. Beyond that, if he (my son) said he wanted to live in Tuscany or some other Conquest property I would probably say you need to look real hard at that. Given that he is required to pay for his own room and board at this point in his life, that decision falls to him. My daughter will be guaranteed for two years. And who knows, in two years time maybe Gateway will be here. As a parent and seeing those ads, that would cause me to recommend some other location. I just don’t find that an appropriate way to try and attract a population to your facility.
The “Bring the ID”…
I haven’t seen that. So I can’t comment on that.
If there are students really researching Conquest they will scroll down and see that…
That is unfortunate. And on that same token you would have to ask Conquest how they feel about that because they require IDs to get in and out of their buildings. They have a swipe system in Tuscany. How would they feel if someone was using a fake swipe over there? I’d suspect they’d be real upset about it.
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