https://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/story/news/2022/09/28/dire-california-student-housing-shortage-search-solutions/10448467002/ California college students struggle to find affordable housing amid limited space Santa Cruz is among the campuses facing a housing crisis Michael Burke, Ashley A. Smith, Betty Marquez Rosales, and Ashleigh PanooEdSourceView Comments Timothy Vidales was desperate for housing, so he applied to a Craigslist ad for a room in a warehouse in Santa Cruz. The room had neither amenities nor furniture, but it was listed for $800 per month by a landlord who suggested that the occupant bring a tent. Vidales, an environmental science major at the University of California Santa Cruz, had already unsuccessfully applied to about 50 off-campus rooms as he looked for somewhere to live during the 2021-22 academic year. When he learned that the room from Craigslist was also already filled, he gave up. “That’s when I knew I was screwed,” said Vidales, who decided to take a yearlong leave of absence from college. Vidales is one of tens of thousands of students across California’s colleges and universities who struggle to find stable housing. About 5% of UC students, 10% of California State University students and 20% of California community college students report being homeless at some point during the academic year, according to a state Assembly report. But the problem extends beyond those who are homeless. Other students end up with expensive, crowded or inconveniently located housing. Most UC and California State University campuses don’t guarantee housing to students for four years, and some don’t guarantee it for any years. Only about a dozen community colleges have on-campus housing at all. State lawmakers have begun to respond to the crisis, which has existed for years amid soaring rents. This year’s budget included $1.4 billion to build more student housing. That money is for housing projects at five UC campuses, nine CSU campuses and 12 community colleges. Create Account Building new housing, though, will take years to make an impact and does nothing for current students. Some campuses and students themselves have turned to short-term solutions for relief, from living in vans near campus to allowing students to sleep in their cars overnight in campus parking lots. Other campuses are looking to convert existing buildings into housing. UCLA, meanwhile, announced Tuesday that it has purchased properties from Marymount California University in San Pedro and Rancho Palos Verdes, about 30 miles south of UCLA’s main campus in Westwood. UCLA is still planning how it may use the sites, but it could accommodate an additional 1,000 students, some of whom could be housed on the campuses. Chancellor Gene Block said he hopes that some programs will be operating on the sites next year. However it’s accomplished, campus officials, students and advocacy groups agree that the state’s colleges desperately need to keep expanding their housing. Research has shown that students living in campus housing are more successful than their peers. “They get better grades, they retain better, and they’re more likely to finish on time,” said Leon Wyden, the vice president of finance and administrative services at CSU San Marcos, which is getting $91 million from the state to build new housing. Expensive and lacking in supply When Vidales started his leave of absence last fall, he took a full-time job with a financial firm based in Sacramento. He saved enough money for a car so he could get an apartment outside of Santa Cruz. This past spring, he signed a lease for an apartment that’s a 25-minute drive from campus. Because parking availability on campus is so limited, he parks off campus and rides a bus to class. Vidales acknowledges that his situation isn’t ideal, but said he’s looking forward to graduating and being able to focus on working. Santa Cruz has a particularly dire housing crisis. The university currently has enough on-campus housing to accommodate just over 40% of its students. The rest are forced into the off-campus housing market, where supply is tight. The average vacancy rate in the area was 3% in 2018, according to an analysis commissioned by UCSC at the time, “illustrating how few properties are available within the market.” A 2020 survey by UC found that almost 9% of Santa Cruz students are homeless, defined as someone who has lacked a safe place to sleep at some point over a 12-month period. That’s the highest rate across the system’s nine undergraduate campuses. This summer, Santa Cruz seniors Sam Walsh and Andre Assadi were searching for housing with friends. They applied to several places, but only one was promising: a four-bedroom home renting for $8,000 a month. That was far more than they had hoped for, but they considered it because the start of the quarter was closing in. But the more they learned about the house, the less they liked it. According to Assadi, the place reeked of marijuana and was filled with stuff they didn’t want. They’d be paying for the garage even though the landlord wanted to keep her personal items there. And they were expected to pay property taxes. They decided against renting it and eventually found a better deal: a 3,000-square-foot home for $7,000 per month divided between six roommates. But the house has drawbacks, too. If they were to walk to campus, it would take them about three hours. A bike ride would take over an hour. Driving would take just 15 minutes, but on-campus finding parking is scarce. “So we’re still having discussions on how we’ll carpool to school or if we’ll bike or if we’ll take a bus that comes a couple times a day,” Walsh said. The process has been discouraging for Assadi, who said he would “absolutely not” have attended Santa Cruz if he had known how difficult it would be to find housing. Other UC campuses also suffer from housing shortages. UC Berkeley has enough on-campus housing for only about 20% of its students. At the same time, Berkeley has been asked by lawmakers to increase its enrollment of California residents. At last week’s UC board of regents meeting, regent Jay Sures said that expectation may be unrealistic. “I think we’re going to have to get real here about this conversation of, on one hand, increasing enrollment and bringing more students to Berkeley, and on the other hand, we have no place to put them,” Sures said. At CSU, the nation’s largest public university system with about 480,000 students, only 10% of them are housed on CSU campuses. CSU estimates that 32,700 students need housing assistance. Plus 14,900 students who lack stable housing need to be subsidized, and an additional 8,900 low-income students who don’t graduate within six years would be able to finish sooner with subsidized housing. The vast geography and demographics of the 23-campus system mean that there’s considerable variability across the campuses. For example, CSU Monterey Bay houses about 41% of its students, while Fresno State mostly serves commuter students, according to a legislative report by the system released earlier this month. In many CSU communities, housing available off-campus is often overpriced, especially compared with on-campus housing, according to a CSU report to the Legislature. The campus-by-campus nature of the issue is similar at UC, with each campus left largely to its own devices to deal with its housing crunch.
Only UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz have housing issues. Other campuses are okay. UCLA guarantees 4 years of housing. 海阔 发表于 2022-09-28 14:25
Thank you! ** Amid student housing crisis, UCLA becomes first UC campus with four-year room guarantee Ever since UCLA built its first four dorms six decades ago, in a quest to shift away from being a commuter campus, the university has known that students who live on campus do better. Now, UCLA has reached a unique milestone. With two new apartment buildings opening this fall providing 3,446 beds, UCLA will become the first and only University of California campus to guarantee housing for four years to first-year students and two years for transfer students
Timothy Vidales was desperate for housing, so he applied to a Craigslist ad for a room in a warehouse in Santa Cruz. The room had neither amenities nor furniture, but it was listed for $800 per month by a landlord who suggested that the occupant bring a tent. Vidales, an environmental science major at the University of California Santa Cruz, had already unsuccessfully applied to about 50 off-campus rooms as he looked for somewhere to live during the 2021-22 academic year. When he learned that the room from Craigslist was also already filled, he gave up. “That’s when I knew I was screwed,” said Vidales, who decided to take a yearlong leave of absence from college. Vidales is one of tens of thousands of students across California’s colleges and universities who struggle to find stable housing. About 5% of UC students, 10% of California State University students and 20% of California community college students report being homeless at some point during the academic year, according to a state Assembly report. But the problem extends beyond those who are homeless. Other students end up with expensive, crowded or inconveniently located housing.
Most UC and California State University campuses don’t guarantee housing to students for four years, and some don’t guarantee it for any years. Only about a dozen community colleges have on-campus housing at all. State lawmakers have begun to respond to the crisis, which has existed for years amid soaring rents. This year’s budget included $1.4 billion to build more student housing. That money is for housing projects at five UC campuses, nine CSU campuses and 12 community colleges. Create Account Building new housing, though, will take years to make an impact and does nothing for current students. Some campuses and students themselves have turned to short-term solutions for relief, from living in vans near campus to allowing students to sleep in their cars overnight in campus parking lots. Other campuses are looking to convert existing buildings into housing. UCLA, meanwhile, announced Tuesday that it has purchased properties from Marymount California University in San Pedro and Rancho Palos Verdes, about 30 miles south of UCLA’s main campus in Westwood. UCLA is still planning how it may use the sites, but it could accommodate an additional 1,000 students, some of whom could be housed on the campuses. Chancellor Gene Block said he hopes that some programs will be operating on the sites next year. However it’s accomplished, campus officials, students and advocacy groups agree that the state’s colleges desperately need to keep expanding their housing. Research has shown that students living in campus housing are more successful than their peers. “They get better grades, they retain better, and they’re more likely to finish on time,” said Leon Wyden, the vice president of finance and administrative services at CSU San Marcos, which is getting $91 million from the state to build new housing. Expensive and lacking in supply When Vidales started his leave of absence last fall, he took a full-time job with a financial firm based in Sacramento. He saved enough money for a car so he could get an apartment outside of Santa Cruz. This past spring, he signed a lease for an apartment that’s a 25-minute drive from campus. Because parking availability on campus is so limited, he parks off campus and rides a bus to class. Vidales acknowledges that his situation isn’t ideal, but said he’s looking forward to graduating and being able to focus on working.
Santa Cruz has a particularly dire housing crisis. The university currently has enough on-campus housing to accommodate just over 40% of its students. The rest are forced into the off-campus housing market, where supply is tight. The average vacancy rate in the area was 3% in 2018, according to an analysis commissioned by UCSC at the time, “illustrating how few properties are available within the market.”
A 2020 survey by UC found that almost 9% of Santa Cruz students are homeless, defined as someone who has lacked a safe place to sleep at some point over a 12-month period. That’s the highest rate across the system’s nine undergraduate campuses. This summer, Santa Cruz seniors Sam Walsh and Andre Assadi were searching for housing with friends. They applied to several places, but only one was promising: a four-bedroom home renting for $8,000 a month. That was far more than they had hoped for, but they considered it because the start of the quarter was closing in. But the more they learned about the house, the less they liked it. According to Assadi, the place reeked of marijuana and was filled with stuff they didn’t want. They’d be paying for the garage even though the landlord wanted to keep her personal items there. And they were expected to pay property taxes. They decided against renting it and eventually found a better deal: a 3,000-square-foot home for $7,000 per month divided between six roommates. But the house has drawbacks, too. If they were to walk to campus, it would take them about three hours. A bike ride would take over an hour. Driving would take just 15 minutes, but on-campus finding parking is scarce. “So we’re still having discussions on how we’ll carpool to school or if we’ll bike or if we’ll take a bus that comes a couple times a day,” Walsh said. The process has been discouraging for Assadi, who said he would “absolutely not” have attended Santa Cruz if he had known how difficult it would be to find housing.
Other UC campuses also suffer from housing shortages. UC Berkeley has enough on-campus housing for only about 20% of its students. At the same time, Berkeley has been asked by lawmakers to increase its enrollment of California residents. At last week’s UC board of regents meeting, regent Jay Sures said that expectation may be unrealistic. “I think we’re going to have to get real here about this conversation of, on one hand, increasing enrollment and bringing more students to Berkeley, and on the other hand, we have no place to put them,” Sures said. At CSU, the nation’s largest public university system with about 480,000 students, only 10% of them are housed on CSU campuses. CSU estimates that 32,700 students need housing assistance. Plus 14,900 students who lack stable housing need to be subsidized, and an additional 8,900 low-income students who don’t graduate within six years would be able to finish sooner with subsidized housing. The vast geography and demographics of the 23-campus system mean that there’s considerable variability across the campuses. For example, CSU Monterey Bay houses about 41% of its students, while Fresno State mostly serves commuter students, according to a legislative report by the system released earlier this month. In many CSU communities, housing available off-campus is often overpriced, especially compared with on-campus housing, according to a CSU report to the Legislature. The campus-by-campus nature of the issue is similar at UC, with each campus left largely to its own devices to deal with its housing crunch.
其实UC Berkeley也还好，一般华人小孩都是坐Fremont Bart呼啦啦🉐️来去，这两年Milpitas的也从Warm Springs来，Dublin/Pleasanton一堆印度小孩
什么意思？ucb的学生不住ucb附近？这是学political science?很空吗？也不参加学校party?也不参加学校各种club?那读ucb这样的好学校干嘛？直接读另外一个加州系统的学校更省钱，可以读San Jose state. 大学时代是建立network 的时候，这父母得多短视，省这种房租。贫困家庭例外
Thank you!
** Amid student housing crisis, UCLA becomes first UC campus with four-year room guarantee Ever since UCLA built its first four dorms six decades ago, in a quest to shift away from being a commuter campus, the university has known that students who live on campus do better. Now, UCLA has reached a unique milestone. With two new apartment buildings opening this fall providing 3,446 beds, UCLA will become the first and only University of California campus to guarantee housing for four years to first-year students and two years for transfer students
你没来过berkeley可能不熟悉情况，这里的club什么的搞笑死了，华人小孩本来就是在房间里自学，最多去gourmet ghetto买个炒饭奶茶，哪里有你想的那么多社交活动，又不是stanford。本来也没说berkeley比sjsc高大上到哪里去。
重点是 affordable housing， 学校附近房子不少可是很贵
我的nephew and niece都是伯克利EECS毕业的，我朋友的孩子很多也是伯克利的EECS/商学院在读。伯克利计算机，商科的很多club好得很。你不会是中国饭店洗碗的吧？别在这儿害人了
说了半天全是不知道哪有年的道听途说，真以为这里没有湾区家长小孩去berkeley，这两年还有人以为挤着去学校边租房为了参加club，你不会就是euclid上那个黑房东吧
这两年我们eecs的都在discord上，非本系认证上不了的，给你截图，什么年代还去校区，晕死
你对berkeley学political science的有意见？没有Berkeley当时那批民权运动先驱，你连美国都来不了，居然在这里大放厥词，看不起Berkeley的人。
最烦这批华人父母把我们EECS的学生名声搞臭，好像我们看不起其他系的人