In California, tens of thousands of college students don’t have a permanent home, and many others struggle to afford sky-high rents while working toward their degrees. Students from across the state are now calling on lawmakers to confront a deepening student housing crisis by making it easier to build campus housing and boosting tenant protections.
“I currently live in an off-campus apartment that costs me more than half my yearly income,” David Ramirez, a UCLA student and an executive officer of the UC Student Association, said at a news conference in Sacramento on Monday. “The options that are available to begin with in Westwood are simply unaffordable. But I also can’t afford to commute three hours every single day from the San Fernando Valley to go to class.”
A widespread campus housing shortage has long forced California students into competition for pricey off-campus options, driving up rents and fueling concerns about overcrowded neighborhoods and gentrification. At UC Berkeley, the school housed just 30% of undergrads in 2020 amid increasing enrollment, leaving students scrambling for cramped apartments and shared houses while inflaming tensions between the university and some neighbors.
Meanwhile, many low-income students have been unable to find housing at all. A 2020 UCLA study determined that one in five California community college students, one in 10 California State University students, and one in 20 University of California students lacked a fixed address.
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“Housing insecurity undermines academic performance, lowers class attendance and increases dropout rates,” said Kate Rodgers, a UCLA student and director of policy with Generation Up, a student-led social justice group based in California. “It is clearly not enough to enact legislation to get students into the lecture hall, but we must ensure they also have the resources to stay there. And that starts with affordable housing.”
The student groups, led by the statewide Student HOMES Coalition, are throwing their support behind four proposed state housing bills. They include:
— Senate Bill 312, which would make it easier for public colleges and universities to take advantage of a recent state law allowing schools to bypass the state’s strict environmental review process when building student housing. That law, Assembly Bill 1307, came in response to an ongoing lawsuit by neighbors to halt a UC Berkeley student housing project with around 1,100 beds at the site of historic People’s Park.
— Assembly Bill 3116, which aims to spur new affordable campus housing by allowing schools and developers to build larger low-income student housing projects and rolling back certain development restrictions.
— Assembly Bill 2785, which would cap rental application fees for all California tenants at $50, and require a complete refund of application fees if an applicant is not selected.
— Assembly Bill 2801, which aims to help ensure landlords use tenant security deposits to pay for reasonable damages and not new unit upgrades once a renter moves out.
It’s still unclear whether the bills have enough support to pass, but the rising costs of going to college have garnered increasing attention from politicians in California and across the country. On Monday, President Joe Biden unveiled a new student loan forgiveness plan to ease debt burdens for more than 30 million borrowers.