What the CA Governor's Office and the CA Higher Education System is Getting Wrong With Funding Student Housing.
Opinion: The Current Grant Regime Fails to Recognize That Student Houselessness and Housing Insecurity is a Localized Problem Requiring Collaboration Across Neighboring Institutions.
Authored by Madison Raasch, a graduate of UC Berkeley with a BA in Political-Science subfield specialization in International Relations, minors in Public Policy and Dutch studies. Former Cabrillo Community College Student Trustee (2019-2020) with a passion for student basic needs advocacy and policy analysis. Incoming researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s Center for Global Security.
Key Takeaways:
The California Higher Ed system needs to treat student houselessness and housing insecurity as a community-based problem, not an institution-specific problem.
The current paradigm of institution-specificity leaves community colleges disproportionately behind the UC and CSU systems.
Local institutions of higher education (for example, a local UC and neighboring Community College) should be able to co-apply, co-build, and co-manage housing infrastructure.
Opinion Piece Text
Last year Governor Newsom signed legislation releasing about $500 million dollars in funds for on-campus student housing across institutions of higher education in California. The deal creates a grant process for institutions to fund projects at their colleges and universities: with 50% of state funds allotted to the community colleges, 30% to CSUs and 20% to the UCs. This funding model treats housing projects and the task of housing students more broadly as an institution-specific responsibility. Houselessness and housing insecurity among students of higher education is a community problem resulting from state-wide housing crunches. Under the recently enacted grant regime, community colleges are to take responsibility for the housing needs of their students, and UCs/CSUs for theirs. Regional housing unaffordability doesn’t discriminate as to which institution you attend, and students attending all institutions are equally worthy and needful of housing.
I argue that funding housing projects which house students across local institutions is an intelligent alternative to this institution-specific model of infrastructure funding. This is the case being that local students, regardless of the differential institutions they attend, compete for housing in the same market. Communities experiencing contention vis a vis influxes of students from growing higher education institutions in their regions and the rent increases that follow need broad relief from heightened market competition. The state higher education system and the Governor’s office should be ultimately concerned with housing as many students from all institution types as expeditiously as possible to provide relief to cities and counties experiencing this economic crisis, which in many cases is driving long-time locals and families out of their communities.
A more appropriate grant regime, rather than one where higher education segments arduously politic over percentage allotment decisions with each budgetary cycle, would be one where neighboring institutions of all types could co-apply for project grants to house students across local institutions. Going to community college in Santa Cruz County and earning my bachelor’s degree at UC Berkeley, I see the same political dynamics in each local context. City residents and governments moan and groan about UC enrollment expansion and blame them for housing unaffordability: while completely overlooking that community colleges also enroll a sizable portion of local student populations, that these students compete in local housing markets and that these students too need housing relief. In fact, the California Community College segment serves more students, by far, than the UC and CSU segments of the state higher education system. Not only do the Community Colleges serve the most students, but their students experience houselessness and housing insecurity at disproportionately higher rates than their UC and CSU counterparts. Moreover, only a small number of California community colleges have student housing- only about a dozen out of 116 colleges- compared to the UCs and CSUs. The California Community Colleges, while receiving the most housing grant dollars, have comparatively little experience in housing project grant application and carrying out administratively laborious construction and contracting than UCs and CSUs. Encouraging co-grant applications and co-housing infrastructure for student housing ought to include freeing up community college dollars to UC and CSU local co-housing partners thus allowing community colleges to take advantage of disproportionately capable and experienced bureaucracies of UCs and CSUs.
This proposed tweak to the grant regime would have major benefits. It treats local student houselessness and housing insecurity, rightfully, as a local problem meritorious of a localized solution. This tweak would likely result in more overall housing being built, as community colleges and their state-allocated housing dollars benefit from the bureaucratic machines housed within the UCs and CSUs. This grant regime tweak would have the favorable side effect of alleviating rent competition locally and tempering disproportionate houselessness and housing insecurity among community college students. This tweak could mitigate dynamics of political contention in counties and municipalities, which resent local UCs and CSUs, by housing a wider variety and larger number of local students. In line with the logic I have delineated, I urge a shift in policy paradigm from institution-specificity in housing provision towards a region-based model where local institutions work together as partners in service of localities, rather than as opponents in Sacramento.