Housing report says private apartments can meet student demand. UW still wants a dorm

A new housing report is intensifying debate over whether the University of Wisconsin-Madison needs to build another dorm.

The report, put together by Maxfield Research and commissioned by the Greater Madison Housing Consortium, examines rental housing within one mile of Bascom Hall and argues that thousands of new beds built, under construction or proposed near campus will be enough to meet undergraduate demand in the coming years. University officials see the state of campus-area housing differently. 

Madison’s housing crunch drew national attention in October 2023, when UW-Madison students camped overnight to secure off-campus leases. Since then, private developers have brought forward a wave of new projects near campus, helping reshape the local student housing market. 

University Housing is currently operating above capacity, with 8,987 residents this fall — more than 115% of its designed capacity of 7,749 beds — requiring the use of expanded spaces such as converted triples and repurposed study areas.

The analysis counted 40,555 existing beds in the region as of January 2025 and projected another 8,055 beds by the end of 2029, bringing the total to  48,735, according to materials summarizing the report given to The Daily Cardinal by MGR Govindarajan. 

But Kurt Paulsen, a professor in the UW-Madison Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture  who participated in broader city-university conversations about student housing, said the numbers do not fully settle the question of whether UW-Madison needs more university-owned dorm space.

“The truth is this was a kind of perfect storm that no one could have predicted,” Paulsen told the Cardinal, pointing to post-pandemic rental demand, Dane County job growth and growing enrollment pressure at the university.

The consortium’s report concluded UW-Madison does not need another dorm. The university, meanwhile, has requested funding for a new dorm in several budget cycles. In its last request, UW-Madison indicated plans to build a dorm without state funding, instead seeking approval from the state before they could take out a loan. The request to build a dorm was removed by the Legislature’s budget-writing committee. 

UW-Madison spokesperson John Lucas told the Cardinal the university maintains that additional residence hall space is necessary, particularly for first-year students. 

“UW-Madison has a responsibility and an obligation to offer first-year students the opportunity to live on campus in University Housing,” Lucas said in a statement. “Students and parents consistently tell us that they want the on-campus experience, convenience, support and programming of living in the residence halls.”

Lucas also criticized the Maxfield report, saying it undercounts first-year students — the primary users of residence halls — and does not fully account for competition from young professionals in the downtown rental market.

Paulsen said the 2023 crisis was worsened by tight vacancy rates — which hovered between 2.5% to 3.6%. 

“If you added 1,000 students to UW-Madison when vacancy rates downtown are normal, 5%, it’s not a big deal,” Paulsen said. “But if you add 1,000 students when vacancy rates are 2%, it is a big deal.”

The report focused on a walkable, student-dense area near campus with a high concentration of multifamily rentals and excluded owner-occupied single-family homes. It also identified a pipeline of projects expected to add more than 8,000 beds between 2025 and 2029.

Paulsen said one major limitation of that approach is that it measures housing availability for students without fully accounting for nonstudents who also want to live downtown.

“It will tell you the number of available beds within a mile of campus, but it does not tell you what is the demand from nonstudents to also live downtown,” Paulsen said.

That distinction matters because many of the new developments are purpose-built student housing: projects with smaller bedrooms, shared common areas and leases signed by the bed rather than by the unit. 

Those buildings may appeal strongly to students while being less attractive to workers, families and older tenants.

In that sense, Paulsen said, Madison may be facing two related but separate housing issues at once: a private market that is increasingly supplying off-campus student apartments and a continuing shortage of more traditional downtown housing for workers and families.

The report reached a similar conclusion, arguing that while Dane County and Madison still need workforce and market-rate housing, student needs near UW-Madison are increasingly being met by the private market.

That conclusion, however, does not necessarily resolve the first-year housing question.

Paulsen also said private apartments for upperclassmen are not the same as residence hall capacity for freshmen. 

UW-Madison has said publicly it wants to house all first-year students who want to live in university housing, even as the system operates above intended design capacity.

“You can have two things that are true at the same time,” Paulsen said. “One, which is that there is a robust private sector response in private rental housing that accommodates the needs of upper class persons, which is a different issue than adequate dormitory capacity for first-year students.”

The university’s own 2024 student housing affordability analysis found an average monthly rental cost of $1,273 per bed near campus, while surveyed students reported paying an average personal share of $903, often by living in older units or sharing bedrooms. It also found that 27% of students share a bedroom to save on rent.

Paulsen said that kind of variation makes direct price comparisons difficult.

“When you look at two units of housing and you just compare the rent, you’re comparing apples to oranges,” he said.

Even so, the surge in new supply should help cool the intense rent pressure students have felt in recent years.

“Rents should stabilize,” Paulsen said. “And the only way that rents go down is if you have sustained vacancy rates more than 5%.”

The report also leaned on demographic projections showing high school graduation rates in Wisconsin and surrounding states are expected to peak around 2025 or 2026, and then decline, suggesting future enrollment growth may slow. 

The report summary also points to geopolitical uncertainty that could affect international enrollment.

But Paulsen cautioned that those broader demographic trends may be less relevant to UW-Madison than other institutions, because demand for admission remains strong.

For now, the debate in Madison is no longer just about whether students can find housing near campus. It is increasingly about what kind of housing the city and university still need most: more private student apartments, more traditional workforce housing or more dorm space for first-year Badgers.

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