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If the Tuition Doesn’t Get You, the Cost of Student Housing Will

National developers are behind the proliferation of luxury apartments near college campuses, and they’re driving low-income students farther away.

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Dominique Lopez, a senior studying nutrition, in her apartment in Austin on Feb. 2.

Dominique Lopez, a senior studying nutrition, in her apartment in Austin on Feb. 2.

Photographer: Bobby Scheidemann for Bloomberg Businessweek

In 2015, Sabrina Martinez got into the University of Texas at Austin, the UT system’s flagship campus and its most selective. She was thrilled. Her parents, not so much. “They were just like ‘Nope. You can’t afford it. You shouldn’t go. Loans are ridiculous.’ ” They encouraged her to go to the cheaper University of Texas at El Paso, to which she could commute while living at home. “But I clicked ‘accept’ on my admission anyway,” she says, figuring that attending UT Austin’s lauded journalism school would lead to more internship opportunities and, ultimately, a job after she graduated.

Martinez’s parents are divorced. Her mother works as a teacher and receives child support from her father, who works in the oil fields of West Texas. Her family always had money for necessities, Martinez says, but with her two younger siblings to take care of, there usually wasn’t much left over for luxuries. That meant paying for college fell squarely on her shoulders.