For two years, Sarah Kate Holland lived in a small dorm room.
She began her college career living in a dorm in The Quad, sharing one 11.9 by 15.9-foot bedroom with another woman and a bathroom with three others.
Her second year was spent in The Village — an upgrade, she said. She lived on her sorority’s hall where she had her own bedroom, approximately 8.5 by 9-feet and shared a bathroom with one of her sorority sisters and a kitchionette with two more.
After two years of living in small rooms and sharing the majority of her space with at least one other woman, she knew she wanted more space. Holland, now a junior in special education, gathered two of her sorority sisters and set out to find a house to live in for the rest of their college days.
The group traveled around and found a house with room for even more of their sisters, but they ultimately decided to live in the Cedarcrest development off of Magnolia Avenue.
“I did not want to live in an apartment,” said McKenna Moorhead, a junior in apparel merchandising and one of Holland’s sorority sisters turned roommate. “I wanted to live in a house.”
Holland, Moorhead and their third roommate and sorority sister Courtney Joseph, settled on a three-story unit with room for three bedrooms.
Each woman has her own bedroom and shares two and a half bathrooms. There is a large living area and updated kitchen, plus two patios with views of the rest of the Cedarcrest development.
Many Auburn community members and alumni have said at City Council and other public meetings that the idea of students living in a house isn’t new to Auburn. Residents have often spoken of their own experience living in a house as college students.
Holland’s house was developed as a single unit in the urban-neighborhood east zone. But there is a new type of housing that has sprung up throughout Auburn that Holland’s house could possibly be classified as, according to an email from Auburn Planning Director Forrest Cotten.
The city has dubbed the new type of housing academic detached dwelling units, and the city is looking to regulate them. The City Council will host a work session on Feb. 15, at 3 p.m. where they will discuss an ordinance that regulates this new category of housing.
The units are typically five-bed, five-bath houses that have no master bed or bath. The bedrooms and common spaces are typically smaller than ones in a single-family house, according to the ordinance that the Planning Commission approved at its January meeting.
They have sprung up throughout Auburn in recent years, especially in Northwest Auburn, causing them to become a frequent topic of conversation at city meetings among elected officials, city personnel and Auburn residents.
The city has drafted an ordinance to better regulate this type of housing. At a Planning Commission work session on this ordinance on Dec. 13, Cotten cited the private dormitory regulations the city put into place several years ago as an example of why swift action is needed to regulate this housing.
“I personally and professionally feel it is fairly urgent we get these regulations to move forward and into place,” Cotten said. “If they need to be adjusted, so be it.”
The Auburn Planning Commission and City Council have approved many housing projects as single-family detached dwellings in recent years that would likely fall into this new housing type category had the classification existed when the projects came before the governing bodies.
“I think what we can’t afford to do is nothing or to delay this any further than it’s taken us to get to this point,” Cotten continued.
Holland’s house could possibly fall into that category. Cotten told The Plainsman in an email he is unable to say definitively if it would be one without reviewing the floor plans, which would only be required if the house’s developer was planning construction on 50 percent or more of the house and would need approval from the Planning Commission or City Council.
If the Council passes this ordinance, academic detached dwelling units would be allowed in six of Auburn’s 18 zones, three by right and three as conditional use, which means that each structure would need to be approved by the City Council.
Holland’s house, if it was reclassified to this housing category, would be allowed. Her house is in the urban-neighborhood east zone, one of the three permitted by right zones — urban-neighborhood east, west and south.
Living in a house is not for all Auburn students, and this ordinance would only affect those looking to live in houses. Holland and her roommates agree that house living was a great option for them, especially since they found it saves them money and gives them the space they were looking for after their two years in a dorms.
The roommates found that their rent, which includes all utilities, would cost them about the same or even less than it would to live in an apartment within the same proximity to campus.
“When we did it, we were just like, ‘We might as well live in a really nice neighborhood in a really nice house with an awesome landlord with a lot more space,’” Holland said.
Moorhead and Holland gave the example of West and Wright, previously known as Evolve. The rent at West and Wright varies depending on the number of bedrooms in a unit and the time of year when the renter signs their lease, but the rent is comparable to Holland and her roommate’s rents.
“It’s pretty steep, but whenever you kind of run the numbers, it’s just as much as living at like Evolve or Bragg,” Holland said.
One of the main advantages the house has over an apartment was parking availability, Holland and Moorhead said. Their house has a two-car garage and a parking space for a third vehicle, while apartment complexes, such as West and Wright, offer a parking garage below the apartments, Holland and Moorhead said.
“I know we’re incredibly spoiled living here,” Moorhead said.
Though their house would be minimally affected by the new housing category that the ordinance creates, Holland and Moorhead see the reasoning for the ordinance.
“I understand that just because Auburn is a college town, but it’s also a town where families live,” Holland said.
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Elizabeth, senior in journalism and political science, is the community editor for The Plainsman
