Off-campus housing
Living in off-campus housing means staying in a place that the College does not own. This generally means a 3- or 4-bedroom apartment, although there are a large variety of setups available across town. If you live off-campus, you will have a landlord with whom you have negotiated a housing agreement, and you are no longer under the domain of Safety and Security.
Living off-campus provides a great deal of freedom, from having a yard to a real kitchen to being close friends with every person in the house, in most cases. It lets you see a side of the town that you would not see living in a dorm, and is less expensive, even including utilities.
The primary resource for students seeking off-campus housing is the online Oberlin Rent Book, compiled by OhioPIRG.
Oberwiki also has some information on certain Oberlin landlords.
[edit] The darker side
The College is aiming to remove off-campus housing in the next few years to increase their income, which will have a significant effect on the economy of the town. The rent rates during the school year are far higher than in nearby towns, due to the students being able to pay the higher rates. Many people therefore live in a nearby town and drive to Oberlin for work every day. If the student market dried up, the rates would be forced down quite a ways or the apartments would go empty, creating serious problems for the landlords trying to make ends meet. Combined with the Wal-Mart, this situation is likely to throw the town of Oberlin into a signficant depression in the years to come. Oberlin College has acknowledged this, but feels that after a few years, the situation will become stable and prosperity will resume.
The number of students allowed to live off-campus is the current enrollment minus the capacity of college-owned housing spaces. The meaning of "capacity", however, is somewhat flexible, as some students have been assigned rooms that are quite literally former lounges with plywood nailed over the previously windowed door (mainly in South).
