Starting this fall, not only will more students be living on the Boca Raton campus, but resident students in Jupiter and Boca will be paying higher rent than last year.

Yesterday, FAU’s Board of Trustees — the 13 officials who vote on tuition rates, stadium loans, and other financial decisions — approved a housing rate increase. According to the Board’s presentation on housing rates, the increase will generate $498,000 to help pay the university’s debt on a new dorm opening this fall. (To see the difference between last year’s dorm rent and this year’s, check the chart at the bottom of the story.)

Parliament Hall, the 614-bed dorm currently under construction on the southeast corner of the Boca campus, next to Parking Garage Two and the Culture and Society Building, cost $46 million to build, the UP previously reported. Once the new dorm opens, up to 4,100 students, of the university’s 29,290 enrolled (as of fall 2012), will be able to live on the Boca campus.

But living in the newest dorm on campus may not cost students more than living in another resident hall on campus. While a $4,407-per-semester single room in Parliament Hall costs the same as a single room in the older Heritage Park Towers, students renting single dorms in the Innovation Village Apartments are still paying the highest rent.

When the BOT approved the Housing increase, a campus leasing and a daycare rate increase at once, one Board member highlighted the rent hike.

“I just feel like the Housing is creeping up. I think at one time FAU was one of the best values for the dollar,” Trustee Julius Teske said. “I hope there’s not significant increases again next year.”

Whether FAU once was a cheap campus to live on or not, it is no longer cheaper to live on campus here than it is at the University of Florida. While a single room in the dorms on FAU’s Jupiter campus, which all Honors College students are required to live in for two years, costs $4,169-per-semester, a single room in UF’s Honors College dorm costs $3,549-per-semester.

Although the rent for double rooms in Glades Park Towers (GPT), Heritage Park Towers (HPT), and Indian River Towers (IRT) will remain the same, residents in the following dorms will have to pay more:

– Algonquin Hall (five percent increase)

– Innovation Village Apartments (varies from two to five percent, depending on dorm size)

– University Village Apartments (varies from three to five percent, depending on dorm size)

– Jupiter Residence Halls (three percent increase)

Former Student Body President Robert Huffman, who oversaw the groundbreaking on the new dorm, voted to recommend the Housing rate increase during an April BOT committee meeting, before graduating.

Current Student Body President Peter Amirato, who voted to support the increase with the full Board yesterday, agreed with Trustee Teske.

“I wish housing hadn’t been increased,” Amirato said. “But that was something that was not discussed in my term, so it’s not exactly my place to comment on it.”

From 2008 to 2013, FAU’s dorm occupancy has dropped from 97 percent to 93 percent.

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Rates for the

2012-2013 Academic Year

Boca Raton Campus:

Proposed Rates for the

2013-2014 Academic Year

 Rates are Per Semester Per Student.

*The Rates Indicated Are Pending Approval by the Board of Trustees.

SOURCES: FAU Board of Trustees, Department of Housing and Residential Life