Why Are Students Paying Thousands to Live in Mold?

The fantasy of dorm living ends after roughly a week, usually around the first encounter with the communal bathroom and the mold. At four-year institutions, the average cost of living in a dorm is nearly $13,000 per year. For a shared room that may or may not have air conditioning—and probably has mold—that price is steep.

My own experience has been tolerable—the communal bathrooms and the morning I woke up to a flooded room notwithstanding—but I know students at my university, Emory, who have had it bad.

While writing for the Emory Wheel, my school’s independent, student-run newspaper, I reported on persistent problems in the Jolley Residential Center (JRC), widely regarded as one of the campus’s worst residence halls. Students I interviewed described bathrooms in constant disrepair, citing broken toilets, oppressive humidity, and, in the most serious cases, mold so severe that some had to relocate. At the time of my reporting, rumors circulated that the university was planning to renovate JRC. But the latest reporting indicates plans to construct an entirely new building—a project that seems to be delayed.

Unfortunately, this kind of situation is common on American campuses.

Howard University drew attention in 2021 when students slept outdoors in encampments to protest unlivable conditions—mold, insect infestations, leaky ceilings, and flooding—that they said put their health at risk.

One freshman told ABC News that she suspected mold in her dorm had contributed to a respiratory infection. She said she simply wanted housing that did not threaten her health, but instead found herself, as she described it, “waking up every morning with a cough that I didn’t go to sleep with the night before, and struggling to breathe at night.”