Long commutes, crammed quarters and couch surfing
UC Berkeley students struggle to contend with housing that's too scarce, too pricey
For Jules Patrice Means, the trip to UC Berkeley begins when it's still dark out and the sun won't rise for another three hours.
She catches a bus near her Brentwood home, then takes four different BART trains before getting on another bus that drops her off five blocks from campus. She walks the rest of the way, determined to get her master's degree in social welfare. Several hours later she reverses course, gets home around 6 p.m. and hits the books.
“My goodness, I'm used to doing a little bit of traveling, but when I saw the commute to UC Berkeley, I almost had a heart attack,” said the 69-yearold Means, who doesn't like driving in traffic and heard enough about Berkeley's high rents not to bother looking for a place there.
“But for me, UC Berkeley is such a prestigious university that I wouldn't care if I had to walk three hours. If you want something bad enough in your life, you're going to do whatever it takes to get what you need.”
That sentiment explains why so many students choose to attend Cal despite enduring horrendous commutes or living in crammed quarters because there isn't enough campus housing.
About 82% of the more than 45,000 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled last fall were left to find offcampus housing — the highest percentage among the entire University of California system. The university had almost 10,000 more students enrolled than it projected in 2005.
The steady enrollment growth coupled with a severe lack of housing prompted a group of city residents called Save Berkeley's Neighborhoods to sue the university over its expansion plan for the Goldman School of Public Policy on Hearst Avenue.
Last summer, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Brad Seligman ruled that student enrollment should be frozen at 42,347 — the same level as the 2020-21 academic year. The judge agreed with the plaintiffs that UC Berkeley violated the California Environmental Quality Act by failing to account for traffic, noise and other impacts the expansion could bring to the off-campus
community.
When the university's appeal went nowhere, the state Legislature moved with uncharacteristic speed in fashioning and approving emergency legislation that was signed last Monday by Gov. Gavin Newsom to lift the enrollment freeze by modifying CEQA.
But that didn't erase the housing shortage for students, many of whom commute long distances, room with myriad strangers, store belongings in cars while couch surfing or shell out thousands of dollars for tiny — and often shared — rooms.
Those scenarios are what many of the more than 15,000 incoming freshman and 4,500 transfer students will face this fall – an experience dubbed by some the “Berkeley Baptism.”
UC Berkeley offered only 6,916 beds in its residential halls and 1,458 beds in apartments last fall, according to university spokesperson Adam Ratliff. The dorms cost residents about $16,300 for the academic year, not counting the mandatory $5,705 meal plan.
Off-campus apartments can easily rent for more than $20,000 over 10 months. For example, a 564-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment at The Standard — a new complex across the street from campus — charges $5,355 a month and is furnished for two renters, though it can fit up to three.
Ratliff said roughly 4,800 students — none of them freshman or first-year transfers — were denied oncampus housing after priority went to students who had documented disabilities, qualified as extremely low-income, were involved in university athletics or were scholars whose admission guaranteed a room.
Among those left was 23-year-old Ali Sapirman, who pays $1,550 a month for a studio in San Jose.
Being immunocompromised, Sapirman struggled to find a safe place to live while pursuing her philosophy degree during the pandemic. She said the lack of affordable options near campus forced her to either continue paying 75% of her income to live with five other roommates or risk exposure on public transit when commuting from the South Bay to campus. She figured the second option was her best.
Alex Melendrez, a firstgeneration Cal student born to immigrant parents, made a similar choice and took BART and AC Transit to classes from San Bruno before graduating in 2015.
After watching how the 2008 economic recession threatened his family's home, the now 29-year-old did everything he could to avoid taking out loans and acquiring debt to afford expensive housing closer to campus. His experience pushed him to try and help more students attend the university, and today he's an advocate for affordable housing.
Kevin Sabo, 30, knows how hard it is to find a room to rent in Berkeley. While serving as president of the University of California Student Association between 2013 and 2016, he stayed in a dilapidated house with 30 roommates, couch-surfed, slept in his 2007 Hyundai Elantra and eventually dropped out because of the housing struggle.
“Despite being homeless, I would pack up into the car I was living in, drive down to Oakland and have lunches — Chinese food every single time — with (former UC President) Janet Napolitano in the beautiful University of California Office of The President headquarters,” Sabo said. “I felt like a peasant who accidentally wandered into the palace and nobody had caught on yet.”
After telling UC regents numerous horror stories about students' housing plight — staying in abusive relationships to avoid homelessness, eating out of dumpsters to save money — Napolitano announced an
initiative to produce 14,000 beds across the 10 UC campuses for students by 2020.
“I think that was when I knew that I could probably leave Berkeley and leave the UC — having done something and left it somewhat better than I inherited it, so maybe there won't be someone who has to sleep in a gym like I did,” Sabo said.
Though much better than a gym, Max Bentley lives in one of the “mini dorm” homes that have been blamed by Save Berkeley's Neighborhoods for disrupting neighborhood character.
The 24-year-old English major is one of 10 people living in a seven-bedroom, 3,392-square-foot baby blue Prairie Home built in 1916 in Berkeley's Elmwood neighborhood — the first in the nation zoned for singlefamily
homes.
Most other options Bentley had looked at were either too expensive or impractical, though she almost rationalized paying $800 for a room in a house shared by a 40-year-old man and his father.
Once she found her current space listed for $1,100 on Craigslist, she said yes immediately.
“I found this place, scheduled a video tour and then later that day I took it — I just needed a place to stay,” Bentley said. “I didn't even know how many roommates we had in here, I thought there were four. I asked myself, `What did I just do?'”
The home is by no means a pigsty packed to the brim with mattresses, but Bentley says she can understand why neighbors may resent it. She and her roommates recently acquired a second trash can to handle all 10 people's trash.
“Everyone that I've met has struggled with finding housing,” Bentley said. “I don't see how we could even fit more people in the city.”
Parie Wood, another student in the home, noted it's hard to be herself because personal boundaries constantly push against each other in the tight space. She pays $800 for a 90-squarefoot sunroom converted to a bedroom.
While making do thanks to plants, a kitten and a fresh coat of paint, Wood says it's hard living in an environment where everything that happens in her room can be heard by her roommates, from guitar practice to Zoom therapy sessions to visits from dates. She questions anyone who might dismiss UC Berkeley's housing crisis as a “normal” experience for students.
“I think there's this romanticization of the struggle and `paying your dues,' so you eat your Ramen, barely make rent and you just barely scrape by,” Wood said. “I think that there's a way in which people sort of either remember that fondly or expect that living with a bunch of people and in a place that's kind of grimy is a part of the experience of being this age.”