With about 100 students on the waitlist, the Cottages at Cajun Village at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette have 56 vacant units due to a need for renovations, but with a tightening school budget, funding potential renovations is a challenge.
The Cottages are family housing on campus for married couples and single parents. According to Scott Hebert, the director of facility management, the Cottages are some of the oldest housing accommodations on campus, causing renovations to be difficult.
Scott explained some of the vacant units have asbestos under cracked tiles, along with other “wear and tear” over the years. Asbestos is a group of naturally occurring fiber minerals that are toxic, creating danger when asbestos-containing materials are damaged.
With a few damaged asbestos-containing tiles in some of the vacant units, it creates a dilemma with what to do about renovating those units. According to Hebert, discussion has been ongoing on whether to fix the few cracked tiles, redo the whole flooring or build a whole new apartment complex.
“So the price goes from…going glue a couple of tiles down from Home Depot or something for like 30 bucks… to like, $60,000 to $80,000,” Hebert said.
Other housing buildings on campus have a maintenance fund, or money set aside for that specific building to fix maintenance problems it may have. There is no maintenance fund for the Cottages. Along with the tight school budget and other active construction projects, funding renovations is difficult. Scott explained how the age of the building could also create a snowball effect to the amount and types of renovations that would need to be done.
“You open up a wall, you expect it to be perfectly healthy and just wooden studs and ready to go. We open it up, and you realize that there’s been a water leak in there for 20 years. You got to deal with all that stuff now too.”
If there were going to be significant renovations made to the cottages or a new complex, Hebert said it would have to be paid for by the Capital Outlay fund, or money provided by state tax dollars to the University for planning facilities. To acquire funds for potential renovations, the project has to be approved by the University of Louisiana System a year in advance.
Though there are currently no definitive long-term plans for renovating the Cottages, Dawn Miller, the director of property management, said they “are looking at a handful of apartments that have minor repairs,” and are “going to try to get those up and running and have families in them for October.”
Jenita Jahangir, a student getting her doctorate in mathematics, said her husband and herself have enjoyed staying in the Cottages. Jahangir moved into the Cottages in 2021 with her husband, where they now stay together with their 3-year-old daughter. She described the Cottages as a “very safe place” where she and other parents feel comfortable letting their children play.
She also noted the convenient distance from campus. “I like to live here because of the environment. It’s very close to the campus. I don’t need to… take my car, I can walk to the campus easily,” she said.
Another resident, Amobi Henry Iwuchukwu, noted the affordability of the housing. For the Fall 2025-26 school year, the housing rate for the Cottages is $3,740 per semester. Students who cannot pay the semester price up front can also sign up for a payment plan.
Proximity to campus and the price of the Cottages make them a desired housing option for some families. Though the application wasn’t hard to fill out, Iwuchukwu said it was being given an apartment that took a long time. He knows many people who have been on the waitlist for the Cottages. Miller said some students have been on the waitlist for about one to two years.
“So I think that is where the problem is right now,” Iwuchukwu said. “I know a lot of persons right now who have applied and want to get into Cajun Village. Yeah, but they can’t get in because the University wants to renovate, and because they want to do that, those guys are stuck, right?”
Miller revealed it’s been suggested that the University raise the price of the Cottages, but she said they “have to be very sensitive, because a lot of the students who live back there are on graduate assistantships or Ph.D. fellowship type things.” The University doesn’t want to “price it to the point where they can’t stay any longer. So, it’s a very fine balance,” Miller said.
Balancing student priority and the monetary needs of the University does require a detailed and thought out plan on how to proceed with renovating the Cottages, but it is a challenge that the University is actively working on.