My son is beginning to look into US government internships that offer positions away from the Northeast. They are paid internships but do not appear to offer housing. Some of the areas are expensive like the Washington DC area.
What do students usually do in this case? I guess it would be hard to sign a three month rental lease? A hotel would seem too expensive. Is it simply that most cannot afford to intern and only wealthy students have this opportunity?
I have heard stories of colleges opening up dorms to summer interns but are all these through some type of agreement between the attending school and the housing school?
I would have your S contact college housing offices of colleges in the areas he is hoping to do an internship to see if there are still availability and what the process is . I have seen students can get dorms for the summer on their own (not through the school). Some internships may provide housing options.
There may also be Facebook groups or something similar where students from X or Y University (for example, something like “X University Housing, Sublets & Roommates”) try to sublet their apartment to someone for the summer.
Depending on the city students who live off campus have 12 month leases that they sublet during the summer. Look at local university housing facebook pages or google housing for that specific university. It is commonly done where my D goes to school. One summer one of her roommates was an intern from out of state while the girl who resided in the apt was gone for the summer.
In DC and NYC, a number of schools rent dorm rooms, short term, to college interns. There are also for-profit organizations which offer intern housing in major cities, they tend to be more expensive than the schools. Depending on the city, if there is a large undergraduate population with 12 month leases who want to sublease for the summer when they are not actually in the apartment, you can also find options.
My D lived in a sublet near American University in DC while she was interning on the Hill. Found on Craigslist. It wasn’t the nicest apartment, but worked for the summer.
I will let my son know to check these items. He does know that if he cannot secure housing then he will have to decline the internship. Hopefully it works out. Two full summers sitting on the couch cannot be too good.
AirBnB, college housing (especially if there’s a college in the area, students have facebook groups to talk about housing), he could room with other interns. However, if there is no housing assistance and it is truly too expensive for him to live there, then the best bet might be to reject it.