A construction boom is underway at college campuses throughout Southern California, adding enough new dorm space to house at least 12,000 undergraduates and put a dent in the region’s student housing shortage.
The new construction — ranging from a 288-student project at Cal State Dominguez Hills to high-rise towers with space for 5,000 residents at UC San Diego — is part of a multibillion-dollar, statewide push to address a shortage of student housing, especially for low-income students.
In all, the region’s public universities have 15 projects in some stage of planning, approval or development.
The building spurt is being funded in part by California’s first-ever grant program to support affordable student housing at community colleges and public universities. So far, the state has authorized almost $2.2 billion in the past three years to fund student housing projects throughout California.
“We recognize that we have a housing crisis in California. It’s getting super hard for anybody to afford a place to live,” said Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, architect of the three-year-old student housing grant program. “This is the first time in 100 years the state of California … decided, You know what? We need to step up and help subsidize the build out of student housing.”
RELATED: Public universities had 9,220 students on waiting lists this fall. Here’s a breakdown by campus
The new developments are sorely needed. More than 9,200 students from nine of Southern California’s 13 public universities lingered on campus housing waiting lists this fall.
The housing shortage creates a mad scramble for students and their parents every year to find an affordable berth to sleep and study in, leaving some students vulnerable to rental scams and resulting in shockingly high rates of student homelessness and “housing insecurity.”
One in five University of California students in Southern California struggles to pay for housing, a November survey shows.
Older surveys show that as many as one in 13 UC students and one in nine California State University students experience homelessness or housing insecurity.
“It was time for California to get in the game and help fund the construction of student housing,” said McCarty, who chairs the Assembly budget subcommittee on education. “Especially if you talk to the universities that are looking to grow. There’s not enough housing right now, and so it is a big piece of the puzzle. … If you talk about growth and enrollment, they talk about housing.”
Waiting list blues
Cal Poly Pomona freshman Julia Postma spent her first week of classes living in a hotel with her mother.
Even though the La Cañada Flintridge teen had applied early for on-campus housing, she was number 70 or 80 on the waiting list in August, her mother said.
She went home after the first week, and her parents took turns driving her to and from the east LA County campus during the next two weeks, a 40-minute commute.
“It was a disaster finding housing for my daughter,” said Julia’s mom, Mona Postma. “I really assumed as a freshman, they would get in (the dorms).”
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Finally, after three weeks, the housing office contacted Julia and said they had a spot for her — but not until after her mom spent several days shopping for an off-campus rental.
One listing on the Cal Poly Pomona Parents page looked promising, but the landlady said Postma had to pay a deposit just to see the place. She drove to the address first and discovered the building was an animal clinic, not an apartment complex.
“It turned out to be a complete scam,” Postma said. “What about the students that are in a rush to do this? I don’t know how many students were scammed.”
Faced with the same dilemma next year, the Postma family is already shopping for housing for the fall 2025 semester. A private apartment complex the family is considering charges $2,400 a month for a single room and has a campus shuttle every 15 minutes.
But the building requires a 12-month lease — or almost $29,000 for one year’s rent, vs. $12,600 for a single room in the dorms.
“It’s a big difference,” Postma said. “She doesn’t need to be there in the summer. It’s a lot more money and commitment (off campus).”
Last August, the Cal Poly Pomona Parents page was filled with desperate pleas for help from families of waitlisted students.
“My kid is an incoming freshman, and this has been a nightmare ordeal,” one parent wrote.
“My child’s schedule will not permit living at home and commuting. (We’re) living in limbo,” commented another.
One Bay Area family transferred their daughter to a private school in San Diego rather than wait to see if she could get into campus housing.
“We didn’t want her living off campus at all. We didn’t know the area, (we had) no relatives, nobody (nearby),” said Noemi B, the student’s mother, who requested that her last name not be used. “The school has a good reputation, but the dorm placement, it just sucks.”
Tuition for the private school, which gave their daughter a scholarship, ended up costing about $10,000 to $15,000 more than Cal Poly Pomona.
“It’s still a lot, but we were worried about her safety,” Noemi B said.
Travis Douglas, executive director of Housing and Residential Education at Cal State San Marcus, said increased enrollment is boosting housing demand. But Southern California’s rapidly rising rents makes the housing hunt even more of a challenge.
Owners of some rentals near the San Marcos campus have increased rent as much as 10% a year for the last several years, he said.
“A facet of this problem is an affordability challenge,” Douglas said. “Even where they may have housing, there’s a segment of our students that don’t have sufficient financial resources to cover all of the expenses. … That puts them into a status where they’re housing insecure.”
Douglas said some students end up couch surfing with friends or living in their cars. Many drop out, he said.
“It’s not just housing students are looking for. It’s affordable housing,” said Randy Timm, San Diego State University’s student affairs vice president. “And when a student who’s coming from other areas of the United States, or even from other parts of California, finds a $3,000 rent, it becomes a sticker shock for them.”
Studies show that students in on-campus housing perform better academically and feel more engaged in university life. They have better grade-point averages, graduate sooner and — should they get in trouble — are quicker to get off probation.
“Just being on campus, you’re not worried about the commute times,” said Ray Murillo, CSU’s interim vice chancellor of student affairs. “… You have more access and more availability for study groups, learning activities, there are study spaces in the housing units, (and) you have better access to the library.”
Building spurt
University administrators and state lawmakers have reacted by building more residence halls both on and off campus.
In response to a 2016 housing initiative, the University of California’s four Southern California campuses have completed 18 projects, creating space for more than 21,000 students over the past eight years, according to the Office of the UC President.
“The overarching goals … (are) to ensure that each of UC’s campuses has sufficient housing for its growing student populace; and second, to keep housing as affordable as possible,” the UC’s 2016 Student Housing Initiative said.
Recently completed projects allowed UCLA to offer a four-year housing guarantee to incoming freshmen, a goal UC San Diego hopes to match in the near future.
But the UC system didn’t stop there. Nine future projects costing an estimated $3.3 billion are also in various stages of planning, approval and development at local UCs. They include living space for almost 10,500 students.
Although traditionally considered commuter schools, California State University campuses also have been adding residence halls, building enough dorm space to house at least 5,900 students since 2015.
And six local CSUs are building new residence halls at a cost of almost $600 million, eventually adding space for 2,040 more students. More than 1,700 of those new living spaces will be affordable to low-income students.
The affordable housing grant program has generated $251 million for Southern California’s four UCs and $331 million for six of the region’s CSUs, state figures show.
While all that new construction will put a dent in the region’s student housing shortage, it probably won’t solve it, state figures show.
In 2022, the CSU system projected that Southern California still would need housing for an additional 13,506 students after projects now under construction are completed.
Doling out millions
Historically, California’s role in supporting student housing was small, with self-supporting residence halls relying on student fees instead of state subsidies, the Legislative Analyst’s Office said in a 2021 report.
In 2021, the state approved the affordable housing grant program to to support construction at UCs, CSUs and, for the first time, at community colleges.
Almost half of the grant funding so far — just over $1 billion — has been authorized for residence halls at 19 community colleges throughout California, state figures show. CSU projects account for $655 million in funding while UC developments account for $490 million.
“The status quo just wasn’t working with the universities doing it on their own,” said McCarty, the education budget subcommittee chair.
Meanwhile, demand for off-campus housing generates a “rent premium” in neighborhoods surrounding universities.
Lizhong Liu, a USC doctoral student, examined more than 4 million rental listings near more than 100 four-year universities across the six-county region, finding that dwellings within a mile of universities cost on average $200 more monthly than similar housing located one to two miles away.
The rent premium is most pronounced in L.A. and San Diego counties, Liu said. Public and private campuses with the highest rent premiums include USC ($345), Cal State Long Beach ($309), Chapman University ($257) and possibly UC San Diego ($133), Liu found.
University officials note also that students in campus-close neighborhoods often live in crowded conditions, or in oddly built accessory dwelling units.
“They’re just building these very awkwardly placed, weird looking ADUs all over the place to be able to bring in more money as landlords,” said Kara Bauer, San Diego State’s executive director of residential education. “And how they treat students is a mixed bag.”
Last summer, a retired high school teacher tried to help a former student when he couldn’t find housing for his freshman year at Cal Poly Pomona.
A week before classes began, he was No. 100 on the waiting list for campus housing, and school officials suggested he commute from his home in south L.A. County. That’s a two-hour trip by bus and train.
The teacher drove the student around Pomona looking for off-campus rentals, while searching Facebook lists and online bulletin boards.
But the student was unable to show he earned three-times the monthly rent to qualify for an apartment. A day before classes, the teacher reserved an Airbnb for his first two weeks of school.
“Miraculously, (he) got a call — just 30 minutes after I made the Airbnb reservation — from the housing office saying that he had a room to stay in,” said the teacher, who didn’t want to be named. “It’s hard. There’s so many barriers to college. … Rich people have a lot of ways to solve this. And poor kids don’t.”
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