Many students at the University of Tennessee at Martin were forced to scramble for a place to live this fall as enrollment surged to record levels and campus housing availability reached new lows.

For the last four years, the number of students living on campus has risen consistently, as has overall enrollment. The campus had an occupancy of 87% for the fall 2024 semester. This semester, however, on-campus housing is in short supply.

“[The campus] is definitely over 99% occupancy. Right now, we have two male spaces and seven female spaces is all we have at the moment,” said Ryan Martin, Director of Housing at the University of Tennessee in Martin. “We are pretty close to being as full as we can go.”

In previous years, students could request to relocate or switch roommates within a designated time period following move-in. With an occupancy rate so high, that was not possible this fall.

“I was the first person to meet with my housing director,” said Gavin Boatman, a sophomore Mechanical Engineering major, who tried to move during the moving period. “[The hall director] called Browning first, they said it was nothing, called Ellington, they said it was nothing, not even private rooms, called Arnold Pryor and they put me on a wait list because they had nothing available. Cooper wasn’t even an option for me to move to. They told me there was nothing they could do… They sent out an email at the end of the week and told me that my request couldn’t be filled.”

Simultaneously, the university used the local Hampton Inn to house returning students for the first week of school. As incoming freshmen are required to live on campus, all of the newest 1,329 Skyhawks were placed before any returning upperclassmen who did not submit their intent to return forms by the deadline. 

“We used the hotel for temporary overflow… and by the time we got to the end of the first week, there were down to just three guys that were there and they were able to find off-campus housing,” Martin said. “It was called the Standby Program, so it was like we’ll pay for your hotel standby if you wanted to give it a little buffer room to find off campus or wait to see if a room opens up after move in.”

The campus held 45 beds at the Hampton Inn for the Standby Program. However, of the students to whom the offer to stay was extended, only about 20 accepted the offer, according to Martin. By the end of the week, 17 of the 20 students secured on-campus housing, while the other 3 secured off-campus housing, he said.

The campus has a max bed total of 2,042. Currently, approximately 2,000 students live on campus. Over 50 percent of the beds filled are freshmen.

“It’s a very delicate numbers game and I know housing has done a good job with that,” said UT Martin Assistant Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs & Dean of Students John Abel. “I know housing is working extremely hard to meet everybody’s needs.”

Abel said the best way to guarantee housing and make the process easier is to check your email and, when the housing form comes through, complete the application before the deadline.

Browning Hall will be demolished during the summer of 2026, and the campus will lose around 300 beds. As a solution, the Office of Residence Life and Housing plans to make the first floor of Arnold Pryor Place into double-occupancy rooms that will have a price relative to the current price of private rooms in Ellington Hall ($2,809). They also plan to revert some of the private rooms in Ellington into double-occupancy, still leaving the campus short 170 beds.

That, however, is not the only thing housing is doing to make up the difference. Starting next semester, the Office of Residence Life and Housing hopes to complete the program set up to help students find housing in the nearby area. Students will have the option to apply for off-campus housing through a new section within the Housing Portal that will direct them to an external website featuring a listing of available rentals nearby.

“I would like it to have it to where the spring, we can have it up and running with listings that people can start looking at before we get to the March 31 deadline,” Martin said.