$116 million will help S.F. State build dorms

Officials at San Francisco State University on Friday announced plans to fill a patch of grass in the middle of campus with desperately-needed dormitories at a moment when state universities are scrambling to lure more applicants while contending with a ruthless housing market.

The project expected to break ground in December includes a six-story residence hall with 750 beds that will rise on the university’s west campus green, now a blank canvas of grass and pavement flanked by soccer fields. S.F. State secured $116.3 million from the state budget to fund 65% of the development, which will also include a dining hall, health center and study spaces.

Funds from a state university bond program will cover the remaining $63 million cost of construction and design. Separately, the state has allocated $2.5 million for a redesign of the Student Services Building, adding more dorm space as well as a cross-cultural center.

State Assembly Member Phil Ting, a Democrat from San Francisco and chair of the budget committee, joined S.F. State President Lynn Mahoney and other leaders on the fog-draped lawn Friday morning to unveil drawings of the future student hub. They showed students lolling on yoga mats or sitting at picnic tables in a tree-lined courtyard, surrounded by tall, glassskinned buildings.

“We realize that it’s so important for students to live on campus,” Ting said, noting how crucial the residence hall experience is to a student’s education and

maturation. Yet the dearth of housing on many California campuses has forced students to either commute from family homes or give up college altogether, missing out on time-worn college traditions like the communal bathroom or the dining hall.

Some have tried extreme solutions, Ting said, relaying the story of a student in Santa Cruz who resorted to living in a battered mobile home and renting driveway space.

“It was so far away from campus, the student ended up not doing very well, having challenges completing school work, having challenges being part of an educational experience,” Ting said.

The numbers are stark, according to the assembly member. One in 10 state university students in California reports experiencing homelessness at some point in his or her educational career, a ratio that tightens to 1 in 5 at community colleges. In the University of California system, roughly 1 in 20 students reports

being unhoused at some point while trying to pursue an education.

UC Berkeley has tried to address the paucity of affordabe housing with a planned $312 million project in People’s Park, a site that’s long served as a symbol of the city’s counterculture movement, though in recent years it’s deteriorated, overrun by encampments and open air drug use. Construction of the development was set to begin in August, but the effort stumbled after university officials had to confront protesters and multiple lawsuits.

This year Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Legislature significantly boosted funding for state universities, with a $365 million annual increase approved in this year’s budget, and a one-time $1.1 billion windfall — enough to accommodate 10,000 more fulltime students in the fall of 2023.

That expansion comes at a moment when state universities face an unusual predicament. Fewer community college students are applying, likely a sign of the hot labor market, and a relentless pandemic that disrupted the lives of a mostly older student population. The escalating cost of housing has only made college less appealing and more unattainable, officials say.

“I really do think that something happened during those two years that fractured the pipeline,” Mahoney, the university president, told The Chronicle on Friday. “I think we’re all startled.”

She and other leaders hope the new state funds will reverse the trend. Ting struck an optimistic tone while walking back to his car Friday. He said 750 dorm beds will “definitely make a dent,” referring both to the housing scarcity at S.F. State, and the crisis in San Francisco in general.

After all, he said, more students on campus frees up more housing stock in the surrounding neighborhoods.