UC Davis is under pressure from the community and local governments to increase their share of student housing. On Monday they unveiled a story to tout their new residence halls as the “most ambitious housing program in UC Davis history.”
However, UC Davis through its LRDP (Long Range Development Plan) has only pledged to build 6200 beds on campus in the next ten years. That leaves about 3800 beds that will not provided by the university for which the surrounding areas may have to provide.
The city of Davis has written a letter asking the university to increase their planning threshold from 90/4o to 100 percent of new students and accommodating half the student population with on-campus housing. Last spring, the Yolo County Board of Supervisors passed a similar resolution to that effect.
The story written by Julia Ann Easley reads as follows:
Resident advisor Connor Heinzman has enjoyed the tree-filled views from his fourth-floor room, walked through pristine hallways and checked out the still-quiet game room in the newest housing complex at the University of California, Davis.
“I’m so excited for the residents who get to live here,” said the sophomore from San Diego, who is majoring in biological sciences.
The $59.1 million Tercero 4 complex of three residence halls and a community building will be home, beginning this weekend, to about 605 students and is part of the most ambitious housing construction program in UC Davis history. The draft proposal for the campus 2017 Long Range Development Plan aims to increase student beds on campus from about 9,400 in 2015-16 to a total of 15,600 at full implementation.
Reflecting the university’s commitment to sustainability, the new complex is expected to be the seventh Student Housing and Dining Services project, and 28th overall across the university, to 
receive certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Program of the U.S. Green Building Council.
Heinzman and Selina Rubio of Chula Vista moved in early this month to participate in resident advisor training with approximately 140 other student staff.
“I’m looking forward to seeing where student residents are going to hang out,” said Rubio, a sophomore majoring in textiles and clothing.
Features of the halls
Each of the residential halls will house about 200 students in single, double and triple rooms. Each floor offers lounges and smaller gathering spaces with window seats. First floors include laundry facilities and study/meeting spaces.
Nestled among mature trees, the buildings are named for species found on the campus: Cottonwood Hall, Redwood Hall, Madrone Hall and Olive Hall, the single-story community building.
For the use of all Tercero area residents, Cottonwood features:
- a music room with sound attenuation and a piano for practicing music
- a wellness/meditation room
- a large recreation room with a television, game tables and three video-gaming stations
Olive includes a large main lounge with a community demonstration kitchen. With a nod to the past, its décor features a large sliding door made of redwood reclaimed from Leach Hall, a residence on the site that closed in 2014.
More about the residential complex and its sustainability features.
Future projects
In the next two years, the campus plans to open a new 500-seat dining hall, the second in the Tercero area, and a 400-bed residence hall to replace Webster Hall in the Cuarto area. Other housing projects planned for the near future would add about 200 two-bedroom apartments for students with families, 900 or more beds for single graduate students and 1,875 beds in apartments.
Housing and enrollment by the numbers
In all, about 5,900 students — including first-year and returning students as well as student staff — will complete the move into residence halls this weekend. Approximately 1,100 incoming transfer students will live in apartments master-leased by the campus housing unit, with roughly half of these students living off campus. An additional 3,700 students live in other housing on campus, including West Village.
The campus estimates it will enroll a total of 9,165 new freshmen and transfer students. Total enrollment, including around 2,000 students studying outside of Davis, is expected to be about 37,850 in the fall quarter. Classes start Sept. 27.
While it is helpful that some new dorm beds have been added on-campus, it provided housing for only 600 students for just one year. After their first year of being freshmen, they are forced off campus because UCD has not been building a correlating number of on-campus apartments on-campus for these students to transition into. Considering the massive number of students, they want to add, this is less than a drop in the bucket: of what is needed. Plus, a new UCD on-campus apartment bed needs to be concurrently built for every one-year dorm bed that the are building now to provide the housing needed for the entire time the students attend UCD.
So, while UCD is trying to “tout” this small number of added dorm beds providing housing for only one year for freshman, they have a long way to go to provide far more beds on-campus. Futhermore, the focus needs to be on building on-campus apartments or some version of student beds which provide housing for the 4 or more years that they attend UCD.
While UCD is trying to portray their student housing plans as being “the most ambitious” housing plans in its history, that may be true for UCD alone in that UCD has been so delinquent for decades in not producing nearly enough student housing for their growth. But compared to the other UC’s, UCD’s student housing production has been completely inadequate and they need to step-up and catch up with building many more on-campus student beds then they are proposing in their UCD LRDP update.
UCD needs to stop playing these PR games and stop trying to continue deflecting their housing needs on Davis and surrounding cities. All of the other UC’s are providing at least 50% while UCD is trying to continue to get way with not providing nearly enough on-campus housing which is the only way to control student housing costs long term. The other UC’s recognize this and that is why they are building as much student housing as possible, adding as many beds on-campus now as possible on those campuses.
Meanwhile however, UCD continues to try to minimize the number of student beds they are adding and not adding nearly enough beds which can house their student the entire, 4 or more years that they attend UCD. That needs to change for the sake of the UCD students, as well as for the sake of Davis, surrounding cities, and the entire region.
And, it serves 600 students the following year, if you are correct… saying it only serves 600 for one year is an interesting thought… not valid, but interesting…
Guess it lies in the way folk parse your comment…
You want the University to build enough housing for 37K+ people on the edge of Davis?
I think Eileen has this part right – it’s a little disingenuous to tout this as the most ambitious housing when the city of Davis and Yolo County have asked them to do more.
They could abandon the two story faculty housing neighborhood and build just multi-story apartments with parking lots all along Russell Blvd. I think this would really change West Davis. I don’t see how this is different than building at other peripheral locations around the City and University.
At the same time the University is adding students, we are under pressure to graduate students on time and there is discussion about graduating students in three years to move them through faster. Eileen seems to think that these students should never reside in Davis and spend all of their time on campus. Maybe the University will relent and develop a town of its own right next to the City, but not in the next 5 years.
UCD’s purported most ambitious housing initiative to date (Tercero 4), as announced in today’s Vanguard, is nothing more than a chimera that disguises the fact that the university has historically fallen fall short of addressing its student housing needs. Let’s start by focusing on the data in UCD’s draft 2017-27 Long Range Development Plan (LRDP). During the LRDP’s baseline year of 2015-16, the three-quarter average student population at was 32,663, of which only 9,472 (29%) lived on campus. 20,578 (63%) lived in Davis, while 2,613 (8%) lived in other cities such as Woodland, West Sacramento, Dixon, Winters, etc. So, a total of 71% or 23,191 students lived off campus. And keep in mind that almost all of the 9,400 students housed on campus during 2015-16 were living in dorms as first year students, after which they were in effect evicted to find housing in Davis and elsewhere.
Now, let’s compare the 2015-16 student housing data to past UCD plans and goals to get an idea of how badly UCD has fallen short, and therefore the degree to which today’s touted accomplishment is illusory.
In November 2002 the UC Board of Regents released a report titled “UC Housing for the 21st Century.” That document said that UCD would build 5,500 new housing beds by the 2011-12 academic year, bringing the percentage of students housed on campus to 38% with a goal of reaching 40%. Yet, by 2015-16 the percent living on campus was only 29%, a full 9 percentage points below the goal for 2011-12 and a full 11 percentage points below the long-term goal. The implications of UCD’s failure in meeting the Regents’ campus housing goals are significant in terms of both housing supply and affordability. To paraphrase the Regents’ report: housing built to meet student, faculty and staff housing needs alleviates the need to provide housing in the community for these same groups; and added demand for housing in the communities surrounding UC campuses results in rising rental and home prices; and when university housing is in short supply, students, faculty and staff must compete for housing in nearby housing markets or live far from campus.
2003 LRDP: The 2003 LRDP stated that by 2015-16, total campus three-quarter average enrollment would be 30,000. As noted above, it actuality it was 32,663, or 2,663 more than the current LRDP’s projections. The 2003 LRDP also stated that 36% of the student population through 2015-16 would be accommodated on campus, or a total of 10,800. That means the number of students living on campus were 1,328 less than anticipated in the 2003 LRDP. So, enrollment exceeded projections by almost 9%, and the percentage of students living in campus housing was a full 7 percentage points below UCD’s own goal. The upshot is that UCD both overgrew its student population and underperformed in housing construction.
Some readers may say, well at least the draft 2017-27 LRDP proposes to house 40% of student enrollment on campus by 2017-28, so at least by then the goal set by the Regents in 2002 will finally be met. However, as concluded in the math I’ve provided in past issues of the Vanguard, the fact that the draft LRDP expects UCD’s student enrollment to grow by 6,337 students during the next decade in reality means that the number of students living off campus in our community will actually increase.
Pretty much good points… from the piece,
Like a story you tell to a child at bedtime to assuage their fears/concerns…
Am hoping that it comes to facts… but, in the meantime, we are in what I believe to be a crisis in housing… we cannot control UCD, nor developers… but we can provide opportunities…
Even if UCD doesn’t provide those opportunities… am thinking the priority should be MF… more dense, tends to be more affordable…
Sharla,
Sorry to see your comments so inflammatory and also incorrect. It is a fact that the only way to control the cost of student housing long-term is on-campus. This is why all the other UC’s are building as many beds as they can now on their campuses…except UCD.
It is clear that so far, UCD is minimizing the number of beds it is building which is compounding the problem for the UCD students, the City of Davis and surrounding cities. UCD just went to the enormous expense of tearing down UCD’s three-story Webster Hall dorm at Oxford Circle off Russell Blvd., to replace it with only a four-story dorm. Why is UCD not building higher there on that footprint to provide more much needed student beds?
Meanwhile, right next door on Oxford Circle a private developer, who had to buy the expensive land and is paying all the City development permits and fees (unlike UCD), is building a 5-story apartment complex. UCD’s waste of its land parcels and low density student housing planning is inexcusable given the need of its students for housing.
Since you work for the UCD administration why don’t you advocate for them to build more affordable student housing on the campus which is working so well for the other UC’s, and would be in the best interest of the UCD students like the students at the other UC’s? Also, please ask them why UCD is not building taller on the UCD Webster Hall demolition site on Oxford Circle off Russell Boulevard?
Eileen, Sharla has no more influence or access than you do as a former long-time UCD employee, or I do as a UCD alumnus. That is: basically, none. It’s pretty clear the UCD planning department is not real open to outside suggestions. We’ll just have to wait and see what gets posted this fall in the draft EIR. I’d be willing to take bets right now that it won’t be 100/50.
” It is a fact that the only way to control the cost of student housing long-term is on-campus. ”
Actually, that is not a fact. You misstate what a fact is. A fact is a basic piece of information, for instance, the cost of rent is $x a month. What you have stated is an opinion or a conclusion which is based on your interpretation of a set of facts or data. It may be strongly held. It may have strong evidentiary basis. But at the end of the day it is still a conclusion or an opinion, not a fact.