Making ends meet
University-based employees struggle to afford college town expenses
By Henri Robbins
Miami University journalism student
From across the street…
Josh Parks is an employee in Miami University’s dining services. He works at Pulley Diner, a retro 50's-styled restaurant in the university’s Armstrong Student Center. There he prepares burgers, milkshakes and other foods for students, professors and staff at the school.
Parks has been working at Miami for around five years, and currently lives with his retired mother to support his three-year-old daughter. For all 35 years of his life, he’s been in Oxford. But because of the college town’s rising cost of living, and Parks’ financial difficulties, he doesn’t feel that he can properly support his family. So, he’s looking for new opportunities in places where he can more easily raise his daughter.
“I want somewhere where my daughter can grow up and feel safe,” Parks said. “Where I’m comfortable enough that I can take care of her and we can live comfortably. Not live rich, but live comfortably, because some people just don’t understand how hard it is when you struggle.”
Currently, Parks is working around 62 hours a week, making just enough to support himself and his daughter, pay rent and bills, and keep a small amount saved up for his daughter, which he could not afford to do if he and his daughter were living alone.
Parks said his current rent, living with his mother in a four-bedroom home, is $675 a month. However, if he and his daughter were to live on their own, he would expect a rate of around $900 a month.
Before Parks was even old enough to work, he was connected to Miami’s dining services — his mother worked there for 36 years. While he admits that things weren’t perfect, Parks said that it seemed a lot more realistic to raise a child on Miami’s food service salary when he was younger.
“I think it was easy, she made it work. But still, I think it wasn’t as hard as it is now, for me working, because back then houses and apartments weren’t that expensive.”
Evens so, Parks still had to do a lot of work on his own from his childhood up until today.
“My mom did what she did, but from the young age of 14 to now, I always had to work. They always told me: At the end of the day, enjoy being young, but there’ll come a time where you’re like, ‘Damn, this shit sucks for real.’”
As Parks grows older and gains more responsibilities, he says he’s getting closer to the “Damn, this shit sucks” point — he’s now making plans to uproot his entire life. And while he’s staying positive about it, it’s not really a choice he made for himself.
Much of his concern, Parks said, is because Miami transitioned from operating their own food services to an external contract with Aramark Food Services. While he’s still under contract with Miami, the new situation means that incoming employees are working more hours and being paid less — a situation that Parks worries he’ll soon be facing himself.
…or across the globe
While long-time employees like Parks have seen broad changes come to Miami’s dining environments, employees like Ilias Meris have no context for what it was like before. Originally from Greece, Meris has been employed by Aramark Food Services across multiple universities in the Midwest, moving between them as needed.
“I’m married. I have a son. In Greece, there’s no future. When my friend made me this offer and asked me if I wanted to join the company, I said yes. Because it’s an opportunity for me and my family.”
Compared to working in Greece, Meris said working at Miami is much more stable, and the consistency of the work he does here means he always knows that he can afford food and rent.
“You have more opportunities here. And I’d say the future is more bright. In Greece you can only think and make plans for next week or next month. The salary is very low, the rent is very high. The taxes are very high. We have about a 24% (sales) tax in Greece.”
Ohio’s sales tax currently sits at 5.75%.
Even though the money is easier to manage and more consistent, there are still some troubles that Meris faces, like the American healthcare system. Meris said he and most of his co-workers from Greece will regularly wait to have non-urgent medical issues treated until they return to Greece for holidays, because they simply can’t afford medical bills stateside.
“The hospitals and all these things are free in Greece,” Meris said. “So if you go [to a hospital] in Greece, and let’s say you broke your leg. You don’t pay anything.”
For both Meris and Parks, large medical bills can either decimate savings accounts or potentially create massive debt.
“If you have something not urgent, you do it when you go back to Greece,” Meris said. “I have a friend in Lexington, and he removed one of his teeth here because it was an emergency. He paid 800 dollars, I think. In Greece, that’s 100 Euros maximum.”
Meris currently has plans for his wife and child to move to Oxford with him in the near future. However, he won’t be able to support himself and his family without moving somewhere less expensive outside of Oxford. Because of this, he’s found a two-bedroom apartment for them just outside of town.
“Most of the companies that rent houses are looking for students, and the rents are done per room. So now, because I am going to bring my family, I would have to pay for two rooms. And I couldn’t bring them to a room in a five bedroom apartment,” Meris said. “I found a place that’s around 10 minutes away from Oxford. But in the center of Oxford, I think it’s impossible to find a spot.”
While this may not seem far, this can still prevent employees from living in, and becoming integrated into, the communities they work in.
There’s also the issue that much of the area surrounding Oxford is fairly rural, meaning that when bad weather hits it can sometimes make it difficult for an employee to get to work on time.
Though Meris is working to make a life for he and his family in Ohio, he still finds himself longing for home.
“Because I work too much, I am not thinking [about it]. I start missing Greece when I have time off, or I have time to speak with my relatives and stuff like that. But yeah, of course I miss Greece.”
Building wealth?
Though workers like Meris and Parks have stable employment, there are still times when they have trouble making ends meet without sacrifices. Their experiences aren’t uncommon, as over 63% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck.
Dan Umbstead, a real estate agent in Oxford, said that one of the best ways for people to build wealth over time is by investing, specifically in real estate.
“Despite what happens on Wall Street, it’ll still be a success,” Umbstead said. “It’s a great way to actually build wealth. A lot of people put the money in the stock market, and right now, that doesn’t seem desirable. So real estate is much more stable place to put your money.”
For those living paycheck-to-paycheck, investing in the future can be difficult, if not impossible. It’s hard to put even $100 away to be unused for months, if not years, in anticipation of a possible larger return when there are immediate needs that must be met.
For Parks, who works over 60 hours most weeks, every dollar counts.
“I still have to work a lot of hours just to have money for me and my daughter, and pay my bills, and have extra money in case she needs something,” Parks said.
Complicating the situation is the constant buying and selling of houses as investments, which can cause an increase in prices that makes housing unaffordable for many, especially in high-value markets like the one today.
“I work with clients that are investors in invest in student rentals in the U.C. area, Miami, Ohio State. And Oxford is right up there. Oxford’s values are pretty, pretty high,” Umbstead said. “It’s a beautiful campus, a desirable place to be, and as far as student rentals, there’s very good income there. The values and Oxford have risen in the last few years by eight and a half, even nine percent. That was a really good sale. I’ve seen, I’ve sold them for 14 times their (yearly) rent. And that’s pretty extraordinary, actually.”
Gross Rent Multiplier is a calculation used in real estate to calculate how quickly a rental property can be paid off by dividing the property’s value by its yearly rent. A GRM of fourteen is considered to be fairly high — an indicator of Oxford’s current housing market.
“Anytime property values are high, it’s restrictive to people who don’t have a lot of cash on hand,” Umbstead said. “You’ve been through a period of time where people are bringing sometimes tens of thousands of dollars over list price to purchase a house. And, you know, most people are not capable of doing that.”
Unaffordable hometown
Miami University isn’t unaware of this problem. However, budgeting for the university has made tackling this issue relatively difficult.
David Creamer, Miami University’s Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Services, said managing the institution’s financial health requires an intricate balance of finances and budgets that results in Miami’s current employee salaries. One sticking point is the university’s state funding.
“The amount of funding we received this year is the same amount of funding we received in 2001,” Creamer said. “So there’s no growth going on there, and that’s a constant issue as we try to minimize the increases for students.”
While the lack of increases may not sound terrible at first glance, the current inflation rate means that prices across the board have increased by almost 70% over the last two decades. As a result, the $82 million that the state provides to Miami University has far less budgetary power than it once did.
“Everything we do is costing more,” Creamer said. “So when we buy anything, anything we need done from a service standpoint, it’s costing us more today than it did a year ago.”
The issue of the unaffordability of Oxford for many workers has been on the City of Oxford’s radar as well. The city has been making efforts to support more affordable housing over the past two years. The Oxford City Council adopted affordable housing as a council goal in 2021, and reaffirmed it in 2022.
While there have been multiple initiatives over the past two years, some notable ones include land acquisitions, taxes on short-term rentals like AirBnB and the committing of Butler County grant funding towards affordable housing.
However, these initiatives can be slow, and many workers in Oxford, like Parks, are either unaware that these services exist, or have yet to benefit from them.
“Oxford and Miami should work with us,” Parks said. “I mean, you think about Hamilton and they have things like Section 8, they can help you. But up here there’s nothing like that. You’re gonna have to pay at least a thousand dollars just for the deposit, they want you to pay the first (month’s rent), last, and sometimes a deposit, and a lot of people can’t afford that.”
According to the crowdsourced database LivingCost.org, the average cost of rent and utilities in Oxford for a single individual is $1223 per month. It’s $2109 for a family of four. That puts Oxford, Ohio, in the top 9% of most expensive cities in the world in their database.
