Vanessa Alaimo sits in her freshman dorm, stress building by the moment as she types desperately on her laptop. She’s just received a rejection email from the University of South Carolina’s housing department — they won’t have a bed for her next year — and she’s growing frantic, not knowing where she’ll live come fall and quickly trying to figure out her options. It’s only February, but already her choices are limited. She’s running out of time to find her next home. And she’s not the only one struggling. Each year, thousands of students at South Carolina’s flagship university scramble to find places to live in the heart of the capital, often forced to make difficult — and quick — choices between high-priced, newly-built private apartments downtown or cheaper but sometimes poorly maintained housing farther from classes and campus life. All the while, USC doesn’t come close to providing enough beds for its 28,429 undergraduates and, in recent years, has done little to make up for th...