Pine Haven

Building J, one of the buildings that made up the Pine Haven apartment complex

Pine Haven was a group of apartment buildings on the campus of USM. It had around 300 apartment units, and provided affordable housing for married couples, single parents, and graduate students. The buildings were built between 1959 and 1963 for a cost of $900,000. In 2005, about half of the 19 buildings were demolished to make room for The Village, a sorority housing development. In 2013 the university announced plans to close Pine Haven in 2018, but that date was changed to the beginning of 2015 after the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning mandated that all dorms, fraternity, and sorority buildings have sprinkler systems by the end of 2014. Rather than making the the expensive upgrades to the buildings the university decided to demolish them. About 40 tenants were told they must be out of their apartments by December 31, 2014.^[1]^[2] The last of the buildings were finally demolished in late 2019.^[3]