Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi will be one of the A&M campuses making a transition within the system this year involving housing which started on April 7.

The university will be purchasing ownership of Islander Housing with properties of both Miramar and Momentum Village from Collegiate Housing Foundation.

This will allow the university to be more responsive to the students’ needs and lower interest rates. American Campus Communities will continue to partner with TAMU-CC to provide a safe environment while managing the properties maintenance, housekeeping, facilities and more.

Operations that are happening now will continue to be the same and students should expect to see no further changes as they live on campus this spring semester. The Connect portal was temporarily unavailable for a few days starting on April 4. Students should be aware that for the fall semester of 2021 the Connect Portal will be a different platform provided by ACC. Islander Housing doesn’t have further details on the certain platform but students will find out right away as soon as the information is released to them.

When it comes to the Housing Payment Option process, in the fall semester of 2022 Islander Housing wants to create a way for students to pay their housing fees through their tuition. This will effectively remove the need to go through ACC and grant permission to access left-over money that didn’t go towards tuition. Therefore residents wouldn’t have to make online payments or checks every month because they’ll be charged for housing through their university accounts instead.

Vice President of Finance and Administration, Jaclyn Mahlmann mentioned she has been here a couple years and has looked over the idea of the transition twice. “In this particular market, interest rates are down and the timing is just right,” said Mahlmann, “CHF owed the debt and we had the opportunity to basically buy it from them at this lower interest rate. Research shows that students who live on campus tend to be more successful and remain in universities.”

As this transition happens the students who signed a lease for the academic year of 2021-2022 won’t need to worry about signing another lease as it’ll just move over along with the change. Students who do sign a lease with Islander Housing for 2021-2022 will receive $750 credit applied to their university account to use for any of the fees they owe. This money comes from the institutional portion of the CARES Act.

Director of Islander Housing, Amanda Morales is excited about all this happening since it will help students get the experience they need while living here on campus. “We’ll have greater control over housing policies and procedures,” said Morales, “We’re going to be reviewing things and seeing if there’s any room for improvement because of course the students are our main focus. We want y’all to have a great experience… there’s going to be savings resulting from all this that will allow us to do renovations, updates and improvements throughout our facilities.”

For more information email Miramar at [email protected] or Momentum Village at [email protected].