University Village resident reflects on moving out process
Only few residents remain at University Village, the University of Missouri-owned apartment complex in Columbia. The school will close the buildings June 30, and plans to demolish them in August.
ABC 17 News spoke to one resident moving out. She says the school has made the moving out process easier. Andrea Jackson, a Mizzou graduate student and two-year resident of University Village, said the school’s Office of Residential Life, or ResLife, found other apartment vacancies for her once the school decided to close the apartments.
“ResLife sent us a form saying, ‘If you would like to move from our facilities, we will help you. Not only if you wanna stay here, but if you wanna move outside of the University, we will help you.'”
Jackson says she was asleep when Lieutenant Bruce Britt, a Columbia firefighter, died after a concrete walkway collapsed from underneath him. Jackson, who lives on the second floor of her apartment building, said she never felt in danger, even after the accident.
Jackson’s brother, Chuck, was there Saturday to help her move down the street to University Heights, another MU-owned complex. Andrea Jackson said the school found the vacancy, along with open apartments off-campus, a week after the school’s decision in March to close University Village.
“They gave me a choice. They gave me control over it,” Jackson said. “You know, and so they gave me hope to know that I wasn’t stranded here in Columbia.”
“For a single female who is living in the city for the first time without family, or friends for that matter, they really made sure that I felt like they had my back in whatever I wanted to do,” Jackson said.
