Finance junior Elijah Wang Chen was inspired to create RateMyRentUT after his experience searching for affordable off-campus housing as a freshman and sophomore. Wang Chen said he wanted to create a tool that transparently compared student housing prices and conditions for students.
In less than three months, the site received 1,275 responses.
The website, which allows students to compare hundreds of apartment rent submissions in West Campus, is just one example of multiple student-led initiatives that have outlined concerns regarding affordability and housing conditions in West Campus.
Roughly 82%, or about 45,000, of UT’s students live off-campus, according to the University’s Facts and Figures. Many students live in the Austin neighborhood West Campus, which is populated with dozens of high-rises, homes and condos.
Other students have also pushed for change in West Campus through forms of advocacy. The student-led University Tenants Union pushed the city to adopt a windowless housing resolution in 2023. The ban also followed a UT student’s 2023 honors thesis that found that irregular natural light contributed to worse mental health conditions.
RateMyRent UT has found that the average price for housing options ranges between $1,100 to $1,500, depending on factors including the number of bedrooms and bathrooms per unit. The website’s responses detail average floor plans, monthly rent, utility and parking costs for apartments and condos mainly in the West Campus area.
Users on RateMyRentUT can fill out a short questionnaire asking their approximate signing date, floor plan, apartment/condo, base monthly rent, utility, parking costs and details on amenities and living conditions.
According to Wang Chen, the average rents recorded on Rate My Rent for West Campus Apartment floor plans with over 20 submissions are:
A group of students launched the University Tenants’ Union, originally known as UT for Housing Transparency, in 2024 in hopes of banning windowless housing.
The union collaborates with University faculty, housing organizations and Austin City Council to advocate for policy change and host workshops for students, according to the organization’s website. Union policy director Riley Sandhop said the union serves as a liaison between students and the city and an advocate for student housing.
“Arguably, you are a part of the most vulnerable group of people in the rental market, just purely by a lack of experience,” Sandhop said. “It’s really important to have a union to spread awareness about what’s right and what’s wrong, what should not be happening (and) what’s not okay to happen when you’re renting an apartment.”
In the past five months alone, multiple apartment complexes in West Campus have faced major maintenance issues. In December 2025, some units in Rise at West Campus went days without running water. In February, 39 apartment units flooded at Moontower. In late March, The Mark had an electrical fire that indefinitely displaced over 400 of its residents.
Some of the most common code complaints the city sees in apartments and high-rises have to do with structural issues, causing leaks, infestations and water damage, said Robert Alvarado, the Austin code division manager. In West Campus specifically, he said some common code complaints are broken fixtures and elevators, pest infestations, no hot water and water damage.
Government and psychology senior Claudia Bieniek lives at 9HUNDRED and said she noticed issues with broken AC units, elevators and mold. Still, she says that her experience has been better than some of her friends’.
“The AC kind of sucks, and the mold is kind of annoying, but you know, you can live with it,” Bieniek said. “I have a lot of friends paying a ton more for tiny little shoe box rooms with no windows.”
UTU’s advocacy led Austin City Council to ban the construction of windowless housing in 2024, according to a code policy recommendation from UTU’s website. The update also mentions that the union is still working to address the “borrowed light loophole,” where natural light comes from adjacent rooms, which still limits direct access to natural light.
Sandhop said another large issue the union is tackling is predatory pre-leasing, which occurs when an apartment pressures new or returning residents to sign a lease anywhere from nine to 12 months in advance.
“It is predatory to sign a lease that far in advance, because anything could happen,” said Sandhop, a government and history senior. “You could end up dropping out for whatever reason, you could end up leaving Austin. … You’re locked into a contract, and there’s nothing you can do about it unless you can find someone to take over your lease.”
Sandhop said one of the union’s major goals is to push the city of Austin to place regulations on pre-leasing, limiting it to six months in advance.
“I personally feel like there is this false narrative that housing goes fast in West Campus and that it’s competitive, and … these companies need you to sign a lease as fast as you can, or else you’ll be homeless,” Sandhop said.
The current pre-leasing condition makes some students feel pressured to sign early without being fully informed, Sandhop said. Environmental science sophomore Madelyn Day said she “frantically” decided as a freshman to sign a lease with The Mark after her friend told her to.
Day said her apartment is located on the same floor where an electrical fire occurred in March. She said she signed her renewal lease around a month before the fire, but if she could choose now, she would move.
Day was not displaced by the fire. However, she said she has dealt with other maintenance issues this year, such as delayed responses to maintenance requests for a broken dryer and uncleaned elevators.
“(The elevator) just got to the point where you didn’t even want to touch the button because it was just coated in old gum and boogers,” Day said.
The union has also been trying to pass reforms for the University Neighborhood Overlay program. The program was first adopted in 2004 to create a high-density and pedestrian-friendly environment in the West Campus area, according to the City of Austin website.
“Tres por Uno” details three policy recommendations the UTU has to optimize the UNO for Austin student-renters: limit pre-leasing, hold landlords accountable for delayed move-ins and close the borrowed light loophole for windowless housing.
Johnny Ruffier, a second-year graduate student at the LBJ School and one of the union’s policy advisors, said the UTU is attempting to update UNO’s code by allowing more properties to participate in the program, strengthen affordability requirements and ensure “some sort of legal mechanisms for student protections.”
Austin City Council originally planned to vote on the proposed amendments last June, but postponed the vote to September to allow UT leadership to meet with city staff. Three days before the vote, Hudson Thomas and Thierry Chu, the former SG executive alliance, sent the Austin City Council a letter asking to delay the vote, according to records obtained by The Daily Texan.
The vote has remained delayed since then.
“Students and city staffers have been working pretty tirelessly to make West Campus a better, more affordable place to live,” Ruffier said. “Because the University decided that they wanted to have a say at the very last minute, everything has been paused, and now, we’re waiting on them to see what we can do, if anything at all.”
A 2023 case study by the City of Austin Housing Department found that the construction facilitated by UNO contributed to a more stable rent market in the West Campus area, compared to the rest of Austin.
“UNO was created in and of itself to respond to rising student housing needs,” Ruffier said. “That is directly because the University did not sufficiently invest in student housing from the get-go.”
An “UNO-type program” is only feasible if there is a demand for housing near the campus and won’t appeal to universities that already have the capacity to house students, as the private market would compete too closely with the institution’s housing options, according to the case study.
In the fall of 2025, UT enrolled 9,900 “first-time in college” freshmen, according to UT News. On-campus residence halls house approximately 7,650 students, according to the University Catalogs website. That leaves approximately 2,250 first-time freshmen to find off-campus housing.
Since 2004, UNO has created 972 income-restricted bedrooms and 401 income-restricted units, according to SpeakUpAustin.
“Our union strongly believes that students deserve more housing options, not less,” Ruffier said. “And if the University wants to offer students adequate housing, we absolutely welcome that, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of more affordable units.”
