Student Housing’s decision this winter to downsize the University’s subsidized off-campus apartments program has left some graduate students scrambling to find a place to live next year.

In late January, many students living in subsidized off-campus apartments — which the University has provided to help graduate students finance their housing since 1998 — received letters informing them that they had to move out by June.

The program was originally intended to be a temporary solution to the skyrocketing prices and high rents of the Bay Area housing market during the Silicon Valley dot-com economic boom. Now that prices have flattened out, officials believe students should pay for their own housing.

“Stanford is in the process of phasing out this program, as demand from students is down and off-campus rentals are more affordable than when the program was started,” the Student Housing Web site reads.

While the entire program was initially scheduled to end in June, University officials decided to extend some of the subsidies until 2009, when the 600-student Munger Graduate Residences are slated to open.

But matters are still not resolved for 2007-2008. When they announced in January that they were planning to downsize the program, Student Housing officials said they could guarantee housing for a mere 138 students at the Oak Creek and Stanford West, two on-campus living options for grad students. This leaves more than 400 graduate students in the lurch.

“I think that the off-campus subsidized housing program should have been extended until after the completion of the Munger Graduate Residences, so that there would be a consistent amount of University-provided housing throughout the transition,” said Charles Anderson, president of BioMedically Affiliated Stanford Students (BioMASS)

BioMASS, along with other groups, has worked with the University in hopes of achieving a compromise.

“We are also concerned about the long-term issue of volatility in the Silicon Valley housing market, and the negative impact this can have on Stanford graduate students who might have to compete for housing with people making much larger incomes than they do, as happened during the dot-com boom,” Anderson added.

Graduate students have brainstormed about ways to fix the problem.

“I think the best solution to this problem would have been to let the people who were in subsidized housing stay in their apartments and to end the program by not renting out places to new students,” said Flo Pauli, a graduate student in genetics.

The University has told students that the program’s budget is not sufficient to allow for this solution.

Another contentious issue revolves around furniture. The off-campus apartments were unfurnished, forcing students who lived in them to purchase their own furniture. Campus housing, on the other hand, is fully furnished, so if students who took advantage of the subsidized off-campus option in the past have to move on campus, they will have to sell or store most of their furniture.

“Most of these students were denied on-campus housing in the lottery and were thus given off-campus housing, so they should not be penalized for having adapted to their circumstances by buying furniture,” Anderson said.

The furniture issue discouraged Pauli and her roommate Katie Cunningham, a graduate student in biological sciences, from moving back into on-campus housing.

“We were offered to move back on campus, but at this point we have accumulated a lot of furniture and there are no unfurnished apartments for single students on campus,” Pauli said.

Pauli said persistence is imperative in the search for reasonably priced housing.

“What we learned is that even though we had to talk to a lot of people to get this done, we were able to find a solution,” she said. “If you are proactive and present your case to Housing, they might be able to help you, too.”