Impact of coronavirus amplified in college towns

DAVIS, Calif. — The community around the University of California, Davis, used to have a population of 70,000 and a thriving economy. Rentals were tight. Downtown was jammed. Hotels were booked months in advance for commencement. Students swarmed to the town’s bar crawl, sampling the trio of signature cocktails known on campus as “the Davis Trinity.”

Then came the coronavirus. When the campus closed in March, an estimated 20,000 students and faculty left town.

With them went about one-third of the demand for goods and services such as books, bikes and brunches. City officials are expecting most of that demand to stay gone even as the economy reopens.

Existential threat

Fall classes will be mostly remote, the university announced last week, with “reduced density” in dorms. Davis’ incoming vice mayor, Lucas Frerichs, said the city was anticipating “a huge impact” with most of the university’s 39,000-plus students still dispersed in September.

Efforts to stem the pandemic have squeezed local economies across the nation, but the threat is starting to look existential in college towns.

Reliant on institutions that once seemed impervious to recession, “town and gown” communities that have evolved around rural campuses are confronting not only COVID-19 but also major losses in population, revenue and jobs.

Where business as usual has been tried, punishment has followed: This past week, Iowa health authorities reported case spikes among young adults in its two largest college towns, Ames and Iowa City, after the governor allowed bars to reopen. And on campuses across the country, attempts to bring back football teams for preseason practice have resulted in outbreaks.

More than 130 coronavirus cases have been linked to athletic departments at 28 Division I universities. At Clemson University, at least 23 football players and two coaches have been infected. At Arkansas State University, seven athletes across three teams tested positive. And at the University of Houston, the athletic department stopped offseason workouts after an outbreak was discovered.

For the cities involved, the prognosis is also daunting. In most college towns, university students, faculty and staff are a primary market. Local economies depend on their numbers and dollars from sales taxes, football weekends and federal funds determined by the U.S. census.

Students at Ohio University represent three-fourths of the usual population of Athens, Ohio. In Ithaca, N.Y., every other person in town is — or used to be — connected to Cornell University or Ithaca College.

In State College, Penn., an estimated 65 percent of the community is made up of students at Penn State’s main campus, a local juggernaut that enrolls 46,000 students, employs more than 17,000 nonstudents and injects about $128 million a year into rural Centre County.

The university has announced plans to reopen with double-occupancy dorm rooms and at least half its classes in person, but it is not known how many students will return. Also in question is the future of Penn State football, a local economic linchpin that generated $100 million in 201819 for the university alone.

Local governments are bracing, too. Amherst, Mass., is scheduled to vote this week on a proposal to increase annual water and sewer fees by an average of $100 per household, a result of a precipitous drop in water use as students have abandoned Hampshire College, Amherst College and the University of Massachusetts in that New England college town.

Census concern

Compounding the concern is the 2020 census. Conducted every 10 years, the national head count determines the distribution of federal funding for a vast number of local and state programs, including transit, public safety and Medicaid.

Because the window for responses has coincided with campus shutdowns, college towns are reporting significant undercounts of students living off-campus, with dire financial implications.

A census without Ohio University students could knock the official population of Athens from 24,000 down to as few as 6,000 people. With an Oct. 31 deadline approaching, responses in student neighborhoods are currently running some 20 percentage points lower than in 2010, with response rates in some tracts of less than 31 percent.

Mayor Steve Patterson of Athens estimates an undercount could cost his small city up to $40 million over the next 10 years “for things like community development block grants, jobs and family services and senior services that rely on a strong census count to get a full funding.”

“We could be feeling this for the next decade,” Patterson said.