The Rose Cafe chat with John Schroeder on Housing/Buildings in Ithaca was extremely interesting. To begin, John handed out a large drawing of Cornell and the surrounding Ithaca environment that was made even before the Arts Quad was constructed. This drawing really allowed me to see all of the construction that has gone on over the years. After an initial introduction into the infrastructure of Ithaca, students began to ask many questions related to the pricing of housing in Collegetown. John’s response was extremely interesting as he told us that the pricing in Collegetown can be as high as a tenant see fit as students are extremely limited in their housing choices. In addition, Cornell has continued to raise its dormitory housing prices along with Collegetown buildings, thereby not discouraging any reduction of Collegetown prices. The building committee of Ithaca has hypothesized that the creation of more apartments in Collegetown will cause an eventual reduction of prices. However, the expected results have not yet been seen as more and more buildings are built. I sincerely hope that Collegetown apartments will eventually come down in pricing for future students. I believe that the current choices of housing for students is very limited, which is why landlords can get away with charging such high prices. Simple solutions that I have tried to brainstorm include: building more apartments, Cornell lowering its housing prices, or students refusing to rent an apartment with outrageous prices. Obviously all of these solutions have one (if not more) complications. This is a difficult problem to solve, but I do hope that we can all work together to help the situation.