The Graduate Employees’ Organization held a community meeting at the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center to discuss increasing rent costs and the rising cost of living in Champaign-Urbana on Sunday.
The event was organized and hosted by the solidarity committees with the GEO, said Adrianna Mirabal, graduate student studying musicology and member of the GEO.
The GEO is an official labor union dedicated to protecting and advocating the labor rights of graduate students who have contracts with the University — such as teaching assistants, research assistants and graduate assistants, said Asha Sawhney, graduate student studying sociology and member of the solidarity committee with the GEO.
“Every few years we negotiate a new contract with the University,” Sawhney said. “If we can’t reach an agreement, all of the people who are members and have an agreement will go on strike and withhold their labor from the University.”
Sawhney added that GEO decided to host this community meeting because they would like to raise awareness about housing and renting problems that a majority of the graduate students at the University have been struggling with.
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“We often feel like graduate students are not seen because it’s not understood how little money we make, and a lot of people in the general community think the people in the University are the ones living in luxury housing,” Sawhney said. “We want to show that we’re also struggling with these costs.”
“I have noticed that the year-to-year increase (in rent) is really high,” Sawhney said. “Also, landlords will figure out ways to make it seem like they are not increasing the rent, but they are.”
Sawhney also discussed the invisible charges on rents by many landlords.
“They are increasing the utility prices, but they won’t actually show you how much the city is charging them,” Sawhney said. “So, how do I know that the money is actually going to utilities?”
Individuals living in the community also echoed concerns over rising rents and the cost of living in the C-U area.
“I do like living in Champaign-Urbana,” said Chibu Asonye, community member and University alum. “It is cheaper than Chicago, but I have been feeling the expensiveness and I am not looking forward to it.”
After starting to notice the changes and potential problems, Asonye consequently decided to attend this event to have conversations with other community members to discuss the phenomenon.
“I wanted to learn about how other people saw the housing crisis,” Asonye said. “I want to see what the issues are and how other people are dealing with this.”
As someone who once went to school at the University, Asonye later expressed her thoughts on the increasing cost of rents, both on-campus and off-campus, after living here for years.
“I do think that we need to get more affordable housing,” Asonye said. “We have homeless students and we don’t need to have that.”
