A few weeks ago, students made their presence felt at the city council meeting by showing up in a decent numbers and conveying to the council, in articulate and at times even heart-wrenching detail, the problems and vulnerabilities they face due to low vacancy rate.
At the same time, while the city of Davis was able to pass Sterling and might be able to approve Lincoln40 and perhaps some other housing for students, there is really only so much that the city can do when the absolute need for housing is roughly 10,000 beds – and even if UC Davis builds to 40 percent of the students, that still leaves probably a 4000 unit or more shortfall.
Georgia Savage, with ASUCD Office of Advocacy, said housing was voted the most presenting issue in the UC System. “We are in the process of urging the university as well as you all to build more housing. We are still in the process of negotiating our LRDP with the university.”
ASUCD passed Senate Resolution 7 to further illustrate that “ASUCD believes both the City of Davis and UC Davis should plan and/or prioritize projects that provide affordable housing options to students, staff, and community members in order to combat this housing crisis and its current and future repercussions.”
The resolution added, “ASUCD joins with Davis City Council in strongly suggesting UC Davis include an equal weight ’50/100′ housing plan in the EIR.”
While the students believe that “[t]he university alone cannot bear the burden of housing,” our numbers analysis shows that UC Davis is going to somehow have to do more.
However, in what we have seen from the UCD response to the city council’s letter, the university does not appear to be willing to entertain the notion of going above 40 percent of students housed on campus – this despite the fact that most of the other campuses are planning to go above 50 percent, and Cal Poly as we have noted is thinking 65 percent. UC Davis not only has large amounts of available land, but, as we have reported, it is not making adequate use of the land that is already under consideration for housing like Orchard Park.
Yesterday, one of the Vanguard readers made a suggestion that I have been chewing on for a while.
This week, students organized a protest against UC’s investment in fossil fuels.
But it was last year that we saw the ability of students to disrupt campus as they occupied the upper lobby at Mrak Hall for over a month. Their actions, which tried to force Chancellor Linda Katehi to resign, caused a good amount of disruption to the campus. Ultimately the campus officials, learning their lessons from the pepper spray incident, decided not to forcefully expel the students and instead the students eventually left on their accord.
The incident did not really expedite the removal of the chancellor – although eventually new revelations would lead the UC President to suspend the chancellor pending investigation.
Other protests have had impacts as well. In 2012, the bank blockade ultimately forced US Bank to close its doors in the MU.
So the question is why aren’t student groups protesting and putting pressure on the UC Administration to increase their housing allotment?
One thing to consider is whether the students really want that much more housing on campus. A number of residents clearly believe that more on-campus housing is the best option. Clearly, the students want the university to go above 90/40. From a numbers standpoint that is an easy position to take.
But there are some problems here. First, there is the question of cost. The cost of on-campus housing is prohibitive. And while the campus is responding to those concerns by planning to increase occupancy to double and triple occupancy for reduced costs – the cost reduction comes with drawbacks.
There is also a question as to how many students are going to want to remain on campus beyond their sophomore year. At a time when they become eligible to drink legally, for instance, they would be precluded from doing so on campus.
I am not arguing that UC Davis doesn’t need to provide more housing – I’m only suggesting that there may well be reasons that the students have not responded in quite the same way to the housing crisis as they have to other issues on campus.
It is something that bears exploring more thoroughly.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
David’s photos only provide a glimpse of the palpable frustration, anxiety and weariness among the students who crowded the City Council chambers a few weeks ago. I cannot imagine attending university under the housing situation they confront. I was there but don’t recall seeing any UCD representatives. If they were watching from home on TV, they could only gain a slight understanding of the feelings evident among the students. Yes, it is time for the students to confront the administration over its lack of commitment to on-campus housing. As I said during the meeting, approval of the Sterling project showed the City is ready and willing to do its part, so it’s now time for UCD to step up and do more than promise to accommodate 90% of the expected enrollment increase expected between 2017 and 2027. That meager goal will do nothing to address the existing student housing situation, and certainly won’t do anything to address the housing needs of the projected increase in faculty, staff, dependents and community college students that the LRDP forecasts.
David,
You bring up a good point. I am certain it would be very helpful for there to be actions like a demonstration at Mrak demanding UCD to provide much more student housing.
To their credit the students organized a resolution mirroring the City’s resolution asking UCD to provide the 50/100 plan for student housing in the LRDP. However, more actions like the similar ones students have had on other issues would really help make their voices heard on the housing issue. UCD clearly pays more attention when there are demonstrations at Mrak.
Perhaps a student occupation of Mrak Hall to demand more on-campus housing will have beneficial impact after Gary May becomes Chancellor. Based on what I’ve read about him thus far, I can’t imagine him disappearing like Katehi did, nor ignoring the housing plight of the students in the same manner as the current administration. I’m reminded of the student anti-war protests when I attended Cal State Fullerton (CSUF) in the mid-1970s. Protestors occupied the outer office of then-CSUF President L. Donald Shields (who was the youngest college president in the nation when appointed in 1970 at age 34). Instead of ducking the protestors, he came out of his office and conversed with them. The empathy he showed diffused the situation and the protestors felt their message had been heard. Shields was CSUF’s second president, and his tenure is so well regarded to this day that he returned to the campus a few years ago to receive an award from the faculty. Let’s hope May leaves a similar legacy.
Weird. This string of comments would lead one to believe that Greg & Eileen are in lock-step with the students in actively supporting the Sterling project. I must have missed a left turn along the way.
Michael Bisch,
Interesting that you make a comment that is not correct at all. The issue is about the need for far more on-campus housing.
I’m actually supporting the resolution adopted by the student body government (ASUCD), which endorses the City Council’s position that the UCD LRDP should be amended to provide on-campus housing to no less than 50% of UCD’s anticipated enrollment of 39,000 students by the 2027-28 academic year. One need not have been in support of or opposed to the Sterling project to have empathy with the housing stress being experienced by many UCD students. It’s UCD that does not care. This was evidenced by former Chancellor Katehi in launching the “2020 Initiative” to add 5,000 more students to UCD’s enrollment over and above the number dictated by the Regents. When asked where the additional students would live, she flippantly replied that it would not be a problem.
Using UCD’s own data (see the CEQA NOP issued 1-25-2017), during the LRDP’s baseline of 2015-16 the city of Davis provided housing to 63% of UCD students. Given baseline enrollment of 32,663, that means 20,578 students lived in Davis. According to UCD, only 9,400 lived on campus. It’s therefore evident that UCD is not doing nearly its share to provide for the health, safety and welfare of its students.
Because the LRDP will only provide housing for 90% of the expected increase of 6,337 students between 2017 and 2027, the number of students living off campus in Davis and other cities will not decrease; in fact, it will slightly increase. In consideration of these factors, the plight of students living in overcrowded off-campus conditions and in many cases commuting to campus from other cities (Winters, Woodland, Dixon, West Sacramento) will not improve. They’ll continue to be subject to the unethical predations of absentee “mini-dorm” owners (I of course concede that there are some good landlords). Last year, during City Council discussion of the rental ordinance, the staff report included the results of a student renter survey. It makes for an interesting but disheartening read, as it makes evident that many student apartment renters experience the same kind of predatory landlord practices that I experienced during grad school in the 1970s: failure to repair malfunctioning appliances, refusal to return rental deposits, etc. Many of these problems could have been avoided if UCD had simply adhered to the goals assigned to it in the UC Regents’ November 2002 report, UC Housing for the 21st Century. That document stated that by 2012 UCD was to provide on-campus housing to 38% of enrollment with a goal of 40%. As everyone knows, those goals were never attained.
Here’s another rationale for more on-campus student housing, quoted from the website of the Georgia Tech student housing office: “Research of college and university students across the nation shows that students who live on campus are more satisfied with their college experience, earn better grades and are more likely to graduate than their commuting peers.”