A Quest for Home

Over the past five months, we’ve been on a quest to secure high-quality student housing in proximity to our campus. Ultimately, we want our own building—or buildings. As an interim solution, we’ve aggressively worked to secure apartments in Lower Manhattan. I’ve personally spent hundreds of hours on this. Other King’s staff invested countless hours. We left no stone unturned.

Securing 100 apartments in Lower Manhattan proved more challenging than expected. Most buildings, even after Hurricane Sandy, had less than 1% vacancy. Other buildings with vacancy aren’t sprinklered, making it illegal for us to lease their units for students.

However, I’m pleased to announce that we have secured apartments in two luxury apartment buildings within a five minute walk from campus. We’ll have 110 beds between these two buildings. This allows us to accomplish one of our key objectives—to replace our Ludlow Residence with more desirable housing. After this semester, men will no longer reside in Ludlow. (I already hear a roar of applause arising from the Lower East Side).

Even so, 110 beds in the Financial District is only one third of our housing need. That means, for the upcoming academic year, we’ll keep the units we have in the Vogue, Herald Towers, and Clark Street. While this implies a commute for most students, our current housing continues to provide comfortable living environments.

This is only a step—albeit a sizeable step—toward our ultimate goal of securing housing close to campus. We’ll take additional steps as we move forward.

Not everyone gets to reside in Lower Manhattan, and that’s a disappointment to some. I ask you to remain flexible. At the end of the day, we have a place to lay our heads—for which we should all be thankful.

Rather than renting more apartments in the Financial District, we’re turning our energies toward finding a long-term housing solution. Given the brutal realities of the NYC housing market, this will take enormous capital and determination. But this is a pressing need for the College, so we’re committed to making it happen. God has a plan—we will continue to do everything in our power to discover that plan.