For many students, the nostalgic stereotype of sharinga utilitarian dorm with a new roommate or splitting a cheap off-campus apartment is an unattainable scenario.
According to a 2020 report from UCLA, 1 in 5 community college students, 1 in 10 California State University students, and 1 in 20 University of California students experienced homelessness that year.
— Bloomberg
California, which has become ground zero for the affordable housing crisis in America, has been boosting college enrollment (with some exceptions) resulting in separate 16,000-person-long waitlists across two systems for available space in dorm facilities which have added some 35,000 beds since 2015.
A dearth of student housing is the main reason behind the controversial Munger Hall proposal at UC Santa Barbara. Other campuses are instituting rentable sleeping pods for those facing long commutes to and from their universities. The crisis has, in particular, affected a terrible toll among first and second-year undergraduates in the state that increasingly don’t come from secure financial backgrounds.
“I made it through the system,” Long Beach City College Interim President Michael Muñoz, who was himself a victim of housing insecurity when he was younger, explained to Bloomberg. “I feel guilt, because a lot of my peers who couldn’t get through community college had the same life experiences I had. We’re losing students — human beings with hopes and dreams that are being derailed.”
10 Comments
damn. That’s a shocking number.
I agree.
This is unbelievable for a first world country. Student debt and now lack of student housing? Where's all the money going?
State/City government pays are ridiculously high. Someone I know that works at Building services and works from 8am to 2pm makes 150k in pay and 70k in benefits per year.
I'm sure there are a bunch of trust-fund babies dreaming up 3D printed "solutions" ad nauseum.
Don't forget the vertical farms, carbon-sucking walls, and if we're talking Evolo-levels of fantasy, flying dorms and towers on legs.
I can imagine a project with a foldable 3D-printed carbonfibre tent c/w tesla charging rig being a viable option too. Put a few well-groomed photoshop figures sitting in their new digs surrounded by squalor...
People who get high pays in the gov and cant solve anything should go down. Yet in California people just care if they are democrats or not . END ~
On the California State University webpage it says they are charging $16,300 per year for a dorm room. (9 months really). At two people a year the school is bringing in $32,600 a year, or $2,716 per month, per dorm room.
My house payment on a four-bedroom house is $964 a month, including principal and interest and taxes and insurance - or one third what the colleges get for every dorm room.
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