Housing
Within the Housing series are materials that document Ostafin's involvement with health issues in the university housing system, the residence halls (especially the governing body of the halls), cooperative housing (the Inter-Cooperative Council or ICC), and racial discrimination in both on- and off-campus housing. The health reports, from the late 1950s and early 1960s, touch on all subjects of health, from cases of food poisoning in the dormitory cafeterias to the poor condition of some of the affiliated houses (i.e. fraternity and sorority houses). Records of the "Board of Governors of Residence Halls" document, in part, the issues faced by the halls on an everyday basis and in larger contexts, such as racial integration in the dormitories rooms. The question of racism is continued in the off-campus housing files which deal with this issue outside of the protective environment of the residence halls.
The "Cooperative Housing" files, while not complete by any means, offer insight into the Inter-Cooperative Council during the sixties and early seventies. Because the option of cooperative housing was first offered in a college setting at the University of Michigan beginning in the 1930s, these files are noteworthy despite their limitations. The strengths of the records lie in the documentation of the ICC's acquisition of North Campus property and the details of applications to the Department of Housing and Urban Development for grants to build and improve its houses. For the scholar of cooperative living on the student level, the University of Michigan should be one of the premier places for study. The researcher should also consult the records of the Inter-cooperative Council of the University of Michigan.
Also documented in the Housing series is the entire lifespan of the "Joint Committee on Central Business District Hi-Rise Development and Parking." Meeting minutes, the report, and a rebuttal of the report are present in the Joint Committee files. Also a variety of housing projects, especially the development of Oxford Housing in the early 1960s and several North Campus projects, are documented in this series.