ALYSON GROVE/Arizona Daily Wildcat Freshmen Justine Bune and Laura Hollabaugh relax yesterday in their Arizona Sonora Residence Hall room. Rooms in the hall usually call for three students to a room; however, due to the low number of residents, regular spacious triples have been turned into doubles.

Due to the housing cap established last year, Residence Life now finds itself trying to fill 149 open spaces in the residence halls, a stark contrast to what administrators encountered last year when they were faced with putting 500 students in temporary housing.

"We are working aggressively to bring that number down as much as possible," said Joel Hauff, associate director for administrative services in ResLife. "If we're 150 spaces short, then that's a shortfall where we planned to have money, but we don't."

With an average room rate of $3,392, the 149 open spaces have caused a shortfall of approximately $505,408.

ResLife earns 98 percent of its revenue from residence hall rent.

This year, there are so many open spaces because there was a high number of late cancellations and about 50 no-shows, said Jim Van Arsdel, director of ResLife.

As a result, ResLife is adopting a number of tactics to fill up those spaces and compensate for lost income.

Students can now live in double rooms at Arizona-Sonora Residence Hall if they are willing to pay the $443 more for the year. Van Arsdel expects a number of students will filter into the double rooms from triple rooms at Arizona-Sonora, generating additional revenue for ResLife.

According to Residence Life statistics compiled on Sept. 4, there were 87 triples in Arizona-Sonora, 86 guaranteed doubles and 19 empty rooms.

ResLife also hopes to address its financial problems with transfers, said Van Arsdel.

Traditionally, students request to transfer to the more expensive dorms such as Coronado and La Paz, paying higher rates for the semester, said Pam Obando, associate director of ResLife.

All the halls except Yuma and Gila have spaces available, according to ResLife statistics.

So far, only Babcock Residence Hall has allowed students to live alone in rooms, she said.

ResLife is also intensifying its advertising campaign to attract more students to the residence halls.

Also, as students are being admitted to the university throughout the fall, ResLife is mailing them fliers with inserts that stress that there are available spaces.

Administrators are aggressively marketing housing for the spring, said Hauff.

Contrary to what most people believe, there are usually spaces available in the spring, said Van Arsdel. In addition to the current available spaces, many students open up additional rooms when they transfer out of the residence halls to move into off-campus housing, greek housing or they study abroad for the semester.

Adam Bennett, an atmospheric sciences sophomore, thinks that in light of all the available spaces, ResLife should open the halls back up to upperclassmen.

"Quite frankly, I feel a little gypped that next year I'm going to have to be forced out of here. I'd like to live on campus all four years," he said. "I'd like (the housing cap) to be changed if at all possible. They need to reevaluate the situation and reincorporate some juniors and seniors back into the dorms."

Leah Allen, a vocal performance senior, believes that admitting more students than there are spaces is a good idea. Last year she had to live in temporary housing, but she said that the situation was "not as bad as most people made it out."

"If they would have had more of an overflow, they would have had people to fill empty spaces."