Living Arrangements

Posted on April 10, 2026

Major dorm renovations and new construction projects are in the works, as is a satellite campus due north. What will Carolina look like when it’s all said and done?
by Ira Wilder ’24

Carolina’s newest dormitory, Taylor Residence Hall at Ram Village, is 20 years old. The last time campus went two decades without building new student housing was the late 19th century, when New West and Carr Building were constructed as dorms. (They are now academic offices.)

The 20-year drought is about to end. The University announced last year it will add thousands of new on-campus and off-campus beds in a 10-year plan to renew Carolina’s student housing portfolio, coinciding with its goal of enrolling thousands more undergraduates.

Carolina will construct new dorms and renovate existing ones across campus, and the timeline is already set, though not in stone, and campus leaders are readying Carolina North to be a major part of the University’s near future.

The next 10 years

The University said over the next decade it will prioritize housing projects that will increase bed counts in new or renovated buildings. With an average age of 78 years, many residence halls need major upgrades. “There is now an imperative to address these modernization and increased capacity needs simultaneously,” UNC Media Relations said in a statement.

The first phase of the overhaul has already begun, as renovations to Avery Residence Hall at the intersection of Stadium Drive and Ridge Road were completed in August, and Avery was redesignated a first-year residence hall.

This summer, the University plans to demolish Jackson Hall, built in 1942 and the longtime home of the admissions office, and its neighboring tennis courts, clearing the way for Residence Hall 1, the exterior design of which was approved by the Board of Trustees at its January meeting. At an estimated cost of $108 million, it is scheduled to open in 2028 and will house around 700 students.

The University said it chose this site because it can accommodate many residents “while keeping the building scale appropriate within the neighborhood” and maintaining courtyards and walkways near adjacent buildings. Residence Hall 1 will be in close proximity to campus amenities, dining halls and Franklin Street.

The University is also planning to build off-campus apartments for both undergraduate and graduate students at Carolina North.

The 10-year housing plan is phased, bringing new residence facilities online while existing residence halls are renovated to ensure there are no sweeping reductions in on-campus housing as the University rotates through demolition, renovation and construction projects. For instance, Parker and Teague Residence Halls along Stadium Drive will be knocked down in the summer of 2028. In their place, a new residence hall will be built, which will allow for a significantly larger number of students to be housed in the central part of main campus. Early projections estimate the new dorm will house 550 to 600 undergraduates, nearly double the current capacity of Parker and Teague. At the same time, Hinton James Residence Hall down Skipper Bowles Drive will undergo major renovations. The new dorms are slated to be designed this year and are expected to be completed in 2030. In the same year, Ehringhaus Residence Hall, which overlooks Boshamer Stadium, is set to be renovated, and a new residence hall is scheduled to be built next door simultaneously.

The University also plans by fall 2034 to replace Craige Residence Hall, built in 1962 just south of Manning Drive off Skipper Bowles Drive, and renovate Spencer Residence Hall, built on the corner of Raleigh Road and Franklin Street 102 years ago.

In total, Carolina plans to either replace or renovate six residential buildings that have a total of 2,728 beds, as well as erect new dorms that will add at least 2,000 on-campus beds, 1,000 off-campus undergraduate beds and 450 off-campus graduate beds.

“That is 10 years’ worth of projects, which is as far as we thought the planning horizon ought to go,” Director of Carolina Housing Allan Blattner said in a statement. “Much will change in these 10 years, and we want to make sure we’re being adaptive.”

That kind of flexibility is almost always necessary for long-term comprehensive plans, Erica Lacey ’25 said. Lacey studied urban planning at Carolina and has worked for two years as a community planning consultant with the Raleigh-based engineering firm Mead & Hunt.

Lacey, citing the undisclosed number of beds in several of the off-campus projects, said she thinks certain parts of the plan are intentionally nonspecific. But she said, from a planner’s perspective, “that’s honestly kind of smart on their end.”

She added that many things out of the University’s control could affect the proposed timeline: funding interruptions, weather delays, tariffs on building supplies. “With any expansion on a public college campus of this size, there’s going to be a lot of things that could go wrong.”

Still, as an alumna, Lacey said she’s excited to watch the project come to fruition as the physical campus grows alongside its student body.

The University anticipates explosive state population growth over the next decade and an increasing number of student applications. More than 20,000 undergraduate students are currently enrolled at UNC. Chancellor Lee Roberts hopes by 2036 that number will be more than 25,000.

The University anticipates explosive state population growth over the next decade and an increasing number of student applications, of which there were a record 84,317 last year. More than 20,000 undergraduate students are currently enrolled at UNC. Chancellor Lee Roberts hopes by 2036 that number will be more than 25,000.

As a “down payment” to that plan, 500 additional first-year students started classes last fall, making the class of 2029 UNC’s largest first-year group ever.

UNC expects demand for admission to continue rising through the 2030s, as the population of North Carolina increases swiftly, even as other universities anticipate a dip in applicants due to declining birth rates after the 2008 recession.

Campus leaders have said they think the housing plan will put Carolina ahead of demand, and history suggests that’s usually been the case.

Building the campus Tar Heels know

Old East was opened in 1795 and has housed students longer than any public building in the country. When it was finished, 41 students were enrolled at the University.

The age of the campus is as charming as it is limiting. The buildings that have defined Carolina for centuries are reflections of the eras in which they were built, designed to meet student needs at the time of construction.

South Building was completed in 1814, and before it was an administrative building, it served as a residence hall for about 80 students. Midway through construction, funding ran out. Before it even had a roof, students began to use the building as a place to nap or study. Old West opened in 1823 to accommodate the growing student population, which increased from 122 in 1825 to 324 in 1855.

New West opened to students in 1861, the same year the U.S. Army surrendered Fort Sumter to a South Carolina militia. As the Civil War progressed, the University’s operations decreased dramatically. Three students graduated in 1866. One graduated in 1869. No students graduated in 1870. By February 1871, the University closed its doors before reopening in September 1875. It’s easy to understand why campus leaders weren’t eager to build any new dormitories from 1861 to 1900.

Since then, housing on campus has evolved “from ramshackle buildings” in which students often found it necessary to sleep on hallway tables surrounded by bowls of water to keep bedbugs at bay, to “modern homelike buildings with the latest conveniences,” The Daily Tar Heel reported in 1939. “The dormitory at Chapel Hill has at last erased its old reputation of untidiness and inconvenience,” T.E. Hinson (class of 1921, class of 1925 MS), the superintendent of residence halls, told The DTH that year. “Once they were a place to sleep — now they’re a place to live.”

Still, dormitories have been central to student social life — banquets, movie nights, roommates, shared word processors and computers. There’s historically been a great sense of unity between hall mates. In 1939, for instance, every male student who lived in Aycock Residence Hall signed a petition to be presented to movie starlet Hedy Lamarr, asking her to become the dorm’s housemother. Alumni who lived in Teague Residence Hall between 1971 and 1988 still reunite to celebrate their dominance in intramural sports.

Life at Carolina through much of the 20th century was strongly influenced by World War II. The school was selected to be the site of a naval air cadet training camp, and in 1942, nine dorms housed four cadets to a room; students that were moved out of those dorms had to live three to a room. Between 1946 and 1967, Carolina added approximately 6,600 on-campus beds. In the 58 years since then, it has added about 2,900.

As enrollment soared in the late 1960s, Arthur Tuttle Jr. ’62 (MRP), then director of planning, wrote in 1967 to the BOT building committee, “The University is growing at an extremely rapid rate and is in the midst of the most extensive building program in its history.”

That building program essentially stopped as soon as the ink was dry on Tuttle’s memo. Only one midsize dorm was built — Carmichael, in 1986 — between 1967 and 2002.

When the building stopped

The University’s midcentury housing boom was largely made possible by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s College Housing Program, through which UNC received low-interest, long-term loans for building or renovating dorms and dining halls. That program expired for all projects that didn’t begin construction by December 1968.

One project that failed to meet this deadline was Polk Residence Hall, which had been proposed as a 21-story women’s dorm adjacent to Kenan Stadium, the spot on which the George Watts Hill Alumni Center stands today. (For comparison, Hinton James is 10 stories tall.) Named for President James K. Polk (class of 1818), the building was one of several skyscrapers proposed in the mid-1960s as the University grew more comfortable building tall structures, such as Morrison, Ehringhaus and Hinton James. Campus planned for the dorm to host 1,000 students. If it had been completed, it would be the most-populated single structure on campus today. According to Tuttle, Polk Hall would have been “the tallest campus residence structure in the southeast.”

As the design went through constant tweaks and disagreements over its proximity to Kenan Stadium, construction kept getting pushed back. The University failed to break ground before the federal government’s loan deadline. Today, students are left to imagine what it would’ve been like to watch a football game from the 20th floor of Polk.

As the HUD program expired, administrators worried campus growth would outpace enrollment. Even though the dorms were full, the waitlist for on-campus housing was rarely greater than the bed count of the larger new dorms the University had been proposing.

“The threat of an almost-empty thousand-man south campus dorm is looming in their minds,” Mark Rodin ’71 wrote for The DTH in 1969. “Furthermore, they envision having to close one of them down because it would be economically unfeasible to operate. They cannot see a ten-story building of brick, concrete, steel and glass sitting there gathering dust.”

Instead of developing expensive projects, the University let dorms become over-occupied, housing three students in double rooms to accommodate demand. In 1974, housing administrators shoved an extra bed in 570 rooms and offered the affected students a 20 percent rebate on their rent. That year, an annual report from the Department of University Housing listed over-occupancy as the “single most aggravating, time- and energy-consuming task.”

Tripling rooms typically involved converting one bed into a bunk bed. Some students were less than excited. “If you have a roommate you don’t get along with, it could be extremely difficult,” Susan Lee ’83 told The DTH in 1979. But other students, such as John Kennedy ’83, told the paper, “It gets kind of cramped, but you learn how to get along.”

By 1975, students were fanning out across Chapel Hill and Carrboro, looking for places to live. The University was expanding its enrollment without building new dorms. Student Legal Services, which today still provides affordable legal aid, was created in 1975 partially to help students with leases and landlord disputes.

The housing waitlist was 142 in March 1976. Two years later, it was 550. (During those two years, overall enrollment increased from 18,729 to 20,294.)

In early 1979, Gordon Rutherford, director of facilities planning, wrote to an architect, “The University would prefer to see private enterprise provide additional housing in the community and would only, as a last resort, build more University-owned housing.” In 1980, as interest rates rose to historic heights and off-campus construction projects stalled, that last resort arrived. The waitlist reached 1,236 that year. And with dorms at capacity, ideas for Carmichael Residence Hall were born out of sheer necessity. It would mark the first time in four decades the University would have to build a residence hall without the help of HUD.

In 1982, the Board of Trustees greenlit Carmichael to be erected on Stadium Drive across from Kenan Stadium, and it would be the first completely air-conditioned housing facility on campus. It opened in 1986, two years behind schedule.

What students want

Students, mainly the governors of the Residence Hall Association, were closely involved with the planning of Carmichael and had regular meetings with campus leaders to discuss what students wanted — recreation and study spaces, especially.

Student voices continue to inform housing development today. According to UNC Media Relations, students have told campus leaders they want a variety of indoor and outdoor shared spaces for small-group study, larger social events and one-on-one private conversations (i.e., online medical visits and interviews).

After Carmichael, the next housing push was between 2002 and 2006, when the University constructed Hardin, Horton, Koury, Baity Hill and Ram Village. Over the next 20 years, undergraduate enrollment increased by more than 3,500 students with no new beds to show for it. The University has focused on updating its current buildings rather than growing the bed count. “Over the past 15 years, we have renovated Joyner and Avery Halls, added [or] replaced elevators, replaced windows, converted window AC units to central systems and replaced roofs among many other projects,” Media Relations said in a statement. “We also continually improve the safety systems in our buildings by adding exterior door cameras, upgrading fire detection systems and upfitting sprinkler systems. Additionally, we replaced all the beds and desk chairs across campus and modernized the community kitchens and social/study lounges with new amenities.”

Junior Audra Farrar, president of the Residence Hall Association, and several other student representatives have been involved in the planning process for the new Residence Hall 1, giving suggestions based on what they like about current resident halls.

Farrar said the biggest problem students face is securing housing each year, but while it is a stressful process, she doesn’t believe there is a shortage.

Students start worrying about where they’re going to live next year almost as soon as they step on campus. The priority deadline to apply for Carolina Housing is in late November. In December 2024, more than 1,000 students were on the waitlist for on-campus housing for fall 2025. Blattner, the Carolina Housing director, told The DTH it’s normal for so many students to be without confirmed housing. The waitlist is typically cleared before August, and about 600 to 1,000 beds open up each academic year due to resident adviser assignments, study abroad plans and other enrollment cancellations.

Farrar said the waitlist has never been a good indicator of on-campus housing demand. She said it’s often bloated because a lot of students sign up for it as a backup in case they can’t secure an off-campus lease. The deadline to cancel the application for on-campus housing is March 1, and the cancellation penalty is $500. If a student cancels after March 1, they must pay substantially more — half of their semester room rent.

“Housing at UNC is practically Survivor,” then-first-year Cooper Hall wrote in The DTH in December 2024, referring to the popular TV show. “Every player (student) fends for themselves, splitting alliances (roommate groups) and switching votes (housing selections) at the last minute to make sure they have a better shot at winning a million dollars (a roof over their head). Some lose their votes (housing timeslot) and are left waiting to see if they will be voted off the island (campus).”

For some students, securing housing has literally become a game. For the past two years, Carolina Housing hid a golden ticket on campus for one lucky finder to skip the line and be among the first to select their housing assignment for the upcoming year (along with a pair of tickets to a basketball game).

Students, especially sophomores, have long struggled to easily secure housing on campus, according to years of reporting by The DTH. First-year students are guaranteed housing because they have to live on campus. Remaining housing assignments are done by seniority, so sophomores have historically had the shortest end of the stick. In late June 2024, the University asked about 30 residents of Craige North and Hardin to relocate or cancel their assignments so a full floor could be reallocated to first-year students.

The pandemic restricted dorm opportunities for Logan Schmitt ’24 during his first year at Carolina. Though securing on-campus housing as a sophomore was a headache, Schmitt lived on campus during his sophomore year, an experience he called imperative in forming friendships. “Students that are juniors or seniors most likely already have met and formed their social groups,” he said, “but I didn’t find mine until I lived on campus sophomore year.”

This year, the University has eliminated the credit-hour hierarchy, leveling the playing field between seniors, juniors and sophomores with randomized time slots to sign up for housing. This “gives everyone a fair shot at the best inventory,” Carolina Housing announced Jan. 6.

The historical alternatives to building new residence halls and apartment complexes are fraught. The University could hypothetically convert former residence halls currently used for classrooms and offices back to their original purpose. These include New East, New West, Carr, Smith, Battle, Pettigrew, Vance, Steele, Whitehead and South Building. The University could triple two-person rooms as they often did in the late 20th century. It could remove the requirement that first-years live on campus and let a few hundred 18-year-olds sign leases for off-campus housing. It could let students temporarily live in study lounges and recreation spaces, as the University did as recently as the 1997-98 academic year. This was especially common immediately after World War II, when “practically all social rooms in residence halls had to be utilized for housing,” Director of Housing James Wadsworth ’34 (’41 MEd) wrote in a 1971 op-ed to The DTH. “Possibly the last great effort by the University to provide housing was to make the Tin Can available for 200 persons.” (The Tin Can was an athletic facility that stood from 1924 until 1938 where Fetzer Hall now stands.) After the war, students were even offered University land on which to build small shacks or park trailers. One student who later became a Distinguished Professor of English lived in a tent for two years. A tent makes a 130 square-foot shared dorm room sound not so bad.

Building new residence halls is still a tricky undertaking on a 200-year-old campus pushing its central campus boundaries to the limits.

The northern part of heaven

“Only limited opportunities for additional development remain on the University’s Central Campus if current boundaries and existing densities are maintained,” read a 1998 University land use report.

So the University is moving beyond its traditional boundaries. Chancellor Roberts informed the Board of Trustees Jan. 21 the University would begin developing a 230-acre satellite campus in the Carolina North Forest, the first phase of which could produce 2,200 undergraduate beds. (Story, page 48.)

Though Roberts has given the project an official kickstart, developing Carolina North is not a new idea. The property was donated to the University by Professor Henry Horace Williams (class of 1883, BA and MA) in 1940, and in the same year, the University bought the airport, which now bears Williams’ name. The forest was the subject of development plans from 2001 to 2019. Rumored or officially considered plans included developing an Innovation Center, creating a physical sciences campus (which may have included an engineering department) or relocating the law school. In 1998, a University report recommended the property be developed with affordable housing for students and faculty. A 1979 housing report commissioned by the Chancellor’s Office recommended the University construct low-rise student apartment buildings there. In 1968, Tuttle, the director of University planning, wrote, “The Airport property would best serve for future University expansion, especially in housing.” In 1957, the Carolina Planning Program recommended the University develop “a split campus” between Carolina North and main campus.

This year, the University announced it was collaborating with the town to establish a dedicated rapid bus line, connecting the two campuses through the “main artery” of Martin Luther King Boulevard.

Chapel Hill Town Council member Theodore Nollert ’24 (MA) said of Carolina North, “I’m optimistic that there are many different ways it could turn out to be a great new form for the town of Chapel Hill and for the University.”

Nollert said if the University combines that bus route with a robust bike network, Carolina North would sustainably increase the local population without increasing car traffic.

Shared shortage

As Chancellor Roberts announced the development of Carolina North in January, he told the Board of Trustees, “The acreage at Carolina North allows us both to address the town’s housing challenges and our own housing challenges.”

The first time The DTH reported Chapel Hill had a “housing shortage” was in 1942. Since then, the phrase has appeared in at least 435 articles in the newspaper. As Nollert puts it, Chapel Hill is the slowest-growing town in the fastest-growing area in the country.

Even though privately built student housing taxed by Chapel Hill might benefit the town, Nollert prefers the University to build more dorms. “That’s the lowest-cost option for students,” he said.

Nollert said he is pleased the chancellor has declared affordable housing an interest, and any policy that results in more housing meets a town interest. Media Relations said the University is in constant communication with local governments to ensure the project progresses smoothly.

The coming decade — the execution of the 10-year housing plan, the growth of the student body and the town’s response to both — will decide what kind of Carolina future students inherit.

Farrar said she’s excited to see what a modern residence hall looks like on Carolina’s campus. “[The housing department] really does care about the students,” she said. “I’ve worked with the professional staff members, and they truly do care. They’re trying to get this done as quickly as possible to the best of their ability. I think having more students at Carolina is great, but it’s going to take time to adjust.”

And, as Media Relations said, “Success at the conclusion of the plan in 2034 would be that thousands of Tar Heel students are living, studying and making lifelong friends in new and newly renovated buildings while Carolina Housing is busy gearing up for the next phase of the Housing Master Plan.”

In the meantime, as Wadsworth wrote in a 1971 op-ed to The DTH, “Chapel Hill will remain ‘The Southern part of Heaven,’ a pleasant place to live, if you can find an apartment.”