By Adrianne Jeffries
Feb. 22, 2007

The recent en-bloc sale of Gillman Heights was announced to its graduate student residents in a letter circulated last week.

The sale means that all the current occupants must vacate their apartments eventually although the exact timetable is not known.

Office of Student Affairs hosted a question and answer session on Thursday to address students' concerns about finding new housing that will be affordable and reasonably close to campus.

A prominent concern was whether OSA would reimburse students for rent if they moved out before the end of the semester in order to secure new leases - a request that Tan Teck Koon said may be possible to grant.

"We will try to help as much as we can," the dean of students said.

Tan was confident that students would be able to stay in Gillman Heights until the end of the current school semester. In the past, student occupants were required to reapply for housing in Gillman Heights every semester with only a 50 percent likelihood of being approved.

Two new residential colleges for graduate students are being built on the Warren Campus and will be completed in 2010. In the interim, the university will try to aid students in finding private accommodation, Tan said.

Tan also said the university has located some alternative housing in renovated housing and development board blocks in Boon Lay and promised to distribute information about it as soon as possible.

The housing is being offered to students by a private developer at a cost comparable to the cost of living in Gillman Heights.

However, students at the Q&A session raised concerned about transportation between Boon Lay and NUS as well as the lack of cooking facilities in the flats.

Students are also provided access to a university-maintained database of private rental listings.

About half of the units in Gillman Heights are currently occupied by graduate students and professors. At the Thursday session, Tan said NUS has been interested in selling these units since 2004 because the building is more than 20 years old.

The university was informed in early February this year that property developer CapitaLand has agreed to buy Gillman Heights for $548 million.

In May 2006, a majority of the non-university residents in Gillman Heights approached NUS for its approval of an en-bloc sale, which refers to an agreement among all apartment owners to sell their units collectively.

NUS agreed to the sale proposal at that time in part because of the condition of the building. Residents of Gillman Heights at the time were informed of the sale proposal.

Of the 500 occupants at the residence, 13 attended the dialogues session. Professors were not invited because their concerns must be addressed to the NUS Human Resources department.