Several universities are considering constructing housing facilities on their campuses — not for students, but for recent graduates. But with Stanford’s increasingly tight housing crunch, matching these plans appears to be a distant reality.

The effort comes in response to student concerns that their only choices for living arrangements after college are to either move in with their parents again or to move far away from campus where apartments are cheap and available.

The University of Pennsylvania announced plans to build 295 on-campus apartments both for those affiliated with the University and the public, while the University of Connecticut has similar plans at its Storrs campus. Furthermore, two colleges in British Columbia, the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University, have built extensive retail and housing developments on campus.

These developments raise questions regarding whether similar plans would be appropriate for the Stanford campus, especially given the high cost of housing in Palo Alto.

Imogen Hinds, associate director of Student Housing, explained that the department’s highest priority is providing on-campus housing for Stanford students and, as a result, it does not have plans to create additional housing for non-students.

“[Student Housing is] challenged with finding enough bed spaces to accommodate all of the Stanford students that would like to live on campus during certain quarters of the year,” she said. “We have had to convert various non-traditional spaces into student rooms and, based on equity standards, up-rate some student rooms to allow for an additional resident.”

Hinds said that the only post four-year-stay option for Stanford students is a “graduation quarter.” This allows undergraduate and graduate students to live in housing for one additional quarter after graduation, provided that there is available space.

Alif Khalfan ‘08 said that he plans to stay in the Bay Area because of opportunities available to him as a Computer Science major. He felt that the price of housing was an issue that he simply had to contend with.

“Even though it is expensive, you have no other choice than to accept the fact that it will be expensive,” he said. “It is a fact of life.”

He added that if there was cheaper housing available on campus, he would probably take advantage of it.

“If the University constructs apartment complexes that are cheaper than housing outside campus, people would jump on it, particularly if it was restricted to Stanford students,” Khalfan said.

However, even though some students feel that finding housing after graduation is a concern, Hinds stated that historically, housing needs for graduating seniors have not been an issue.

“We have not heard of any additional need for housing,” she said, “beyond a ‘graduation quarter,’ from students in the past.”