Thousands of UC students struggling to find housing

Hotel vouchers could be answer for many waiting for a dorm room to open

Nazrawi Allen is about to begin his fourth year at the University of California, Santa Barbara, but he — like thousands of other students in the UC system — doesn’t yet have a place to live.

He is among hundreds of UC Santa Barbara students on the campus dorm waiting list, and as for living off campus, “That option is pretty much out the window,” Allen said. He has looked for a place in Isla Vista, the neighborhood where the campus is located, but available off-campus housing is virtually nonexistent. The few apartments that are accepting applicants are far out of Allen’s price range.

He says he may be forced to live in his car while he attends college.

The pandemic and the desire to maintain physical distancing have prompted some landlords and renters in Isla Vista to limit the density in shared houses and apartments. The result is fewer rooms available for students, and campus dorms can’t always handle the extra demand.

Though the housing shortage may not be universal throughout the UC system, it has affected thousands of students at UC Merced, UC San Diego and UC Santa Cruz, in addition to Santa Barbara.

At UC Santa Cruz, rental prices are up and availability is low, according to Lookout Santa Cruz, an online publication. A spokesman for the Santa Cruz campus told the website that “several hundred” students are on a waiting list for on-campus housing.

UC Merced, one of two campuses on the semester schedule, was forced to delay the start of in-person classes because about 1,000 students couldn’t find housing.

UC Berkeley long has struggled with housing issues. The campus, which started classes more than two weeks ago, did not provide

figures for how many students still are seeking housing. But before classes began, as many as 5,000 students who had applied for housing could not be accommodated, according to a spokesperson.

Late last month, an Alameda County judge ordered the university to freeze student enrollments over its impact on local neighborhoods, with housing availability being a prime issue. Meanwhile, a plan to lease 200 dorm rooms at Mills College has fallen through.

The university is trying to address the shortage by unveiling a 12-story student housing project at People’s Park that could accommodate about 1,100 students.

To be sure, not all campuses are experiencing a housing crunch.

“Student housing for each campus is unique,” Stett Holbrook, a spokesman for UC’s central president’s office, said in an email.

Holbrook pointed out that the UC system added 15,000 additional beds from 2016 to 2020, but added that UC “understands the challenges some students face in finding housing.”

At the Santa Barbara campus, administrators are scrambling to solve the problem. Despite efforts by student organizers to push the university to give students the option to take classes online, the campus has not budged on its plan for in-person instruction. Instead, more students than ever are being housed in on-campus dorms and apartments, often three students per room.

In some cases, lounge areas even will be rearranged to serve as rooms for students.

So far, the campus has been able to accommodate all freshmen, sophomores and transfer students who met the priority deadline for requesting on-campus housing, said Andrea Estrada, a spokeswoman for the university. But that’s not the case for hundreds of juniors and seniors like Allen and other students who didn’t meet that deadline.

To get those students housed, campus officials are turning to nearby hotels. UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry Yang said in a memo to the campus that administrators are negotiating with local hotels “to make rooms available to those who cannot find suitable housing elsewhere.” But even that would be only a short-term solution, as those rooms would only be available for the fall quarter.

Some, like second-year student Isabella Roy, may forgo attending classes altogether this fall if they can’t find somewhere to live.

Roy said she and her roommates signed a holding deposit for an apartment in Isla Vista in the spring. In July, her landlord asked them to send proof of income. Three weeks later, according to Roy, she and her roommates were informed that the apartment was no longer available.

Since then, like so many others, they haven’t found anything viable. If she can’t find anything, Roy plans to withdraw from the campus for the quarter and try to return for the spring.

Some students see an easy solution to the housing crisis: giving students the option to take classes online. That way, those who can’t find housing near campus can enroll in their classes without physically being in the area.

Groups including the Isla Vista Tenants Union and the office of the president for UC Santa Barbara’s student government have called on the university to create an online option, something that would help students like Allen.

Allen said if UC Santa Barbara allowed students to take their classes online, that might prompt some students to cancel their housing contracts, perhaps opening up space for him to live on campus.

At the very least, Allen could take classes from his family’s home in Contra Costa County. That wouldn’t be ideal because his parents and two siblings all work from home, creating a “hectic” environment.

“I’d much rather have my own space where I can attend Zoom classes in peace, but if it comes down to it, if that’s my best option and my other option is to be homeless, then I’ll stay home,” he said.

Pabla, the vice chair of the tenants union, said the hotel solution may be the only path forward given that the university is adamant about having exclusively in-person classes. But she added that the university needs to move quickly.

“It looks like hotel vouchers are the best option right now, but we needed to get that going yesterday,” she said.