New on campus
Exactly where a bed larger than a twin would fit was the question at hand for incoming UCLA graduate student Ariel Robinson, 22, as she checked out her on-campus apartment for the first time.
Her father, Mark, along for support and with a tape measure in hand, figured his daughter’s bedroom in a recently opened housing complex at UCLA to be 10 feet by 10 feet.
“It’s luxury condo living -- miniaturized,” said the University of Pennsylvania graduate, who will start law school this month.
Robinson is among the first to benefit from a flurry of new housing construction at UCLA.
Though much of UCLA’s housing stock was built more than 40 years ago, seven new apartment buildings and three residence halls will be opening over the next few years, providing housing for 4,000 students -- the most bed spaces that UCLA will have ever built at one time.
Robinson’s new two-bedroom, campus-owned townhouse apartment -- complete with two-toned checkerboard kitchen flooring, built-in appliances, industrial-looking carpeting and view of the Los Angeles National Cemetery -- runs for $1,750 a month, a cost she will split with a roommate. Even though the place was a bit small at about 800 square feet, Robinson said she didn’t mind.
“At Penn, the apartments were so old. And we had cockroaches and mice,” she explained while unloading a law book, floor lamp and bag filled with toilet paper. “I am happy to be in a place, even if it is small, that is clean and new.”
The entire UC system, which will grow to 10 campuses in 2005 with the addition of a campus in Merced, is undergoing the most aggressive acquisition and housing construction effort in the system’s history to help alleviate what officials call an extreme shortage of beds.
The number of students enrolled in the University of California system grew by 15% -- about 24,000 students -- from 1998 to 2001. Some 40,800 more are expected by 2010. If UC had its way, they’d all have housing. Throughout the system, 34,000 new beds -- 5,000 of which already have been completed -- will be constructed at an estimated cost to UC of $2 billion.
The decade-long construction campaign is scheduled to be finished by the academic year 2011-12. On Southern California campuses, the goal is to add 4,300 beds at UC Irvine, 1,900 at UC Santa Barbara, 5,900 at UC San Diego and 4,500 at UC Riverside.
To cover construction costs, housing rates on UC campuses are rising and, in some cases, outpacing off-campus rental increases.
Anticipating the cost for the UCLA construction at about $311 million, the university has raised rents for its on-campus apartments and dorms 39% in five years, according to Michael Foraker, director of housing.
Only about 9,500 of UCLA’s 38,000 students were able to live on campus last year, an option that university officials say greatly enhances a student’s overall academic experience. The rest lived off campus or commuted from home.
In the last three years, UCLA has purchased five properties -- at a cost of about $18 million -- to help ease housing shortages. Prices started rising at UCLA most notably during that same time frame. Foraker anticipates another year of increases before rates stabilize.
“It’s painful,” he said, “but there’s no way around it.”
Like many universities, UCLA distributes the costs for such capital improvements evenly throughout its housing programs -- a practice known as “rate leveling.” Every student living in campus-owned facilities helps pay the price.
Among them is Shawn Do, 18, an incoming UCLA sophomore. His parents noticed immediately the rise in the cost for his housing compared with that of his sister, Anh Dao Do, who graduated from UCLA in 2002.
“They were asking me why prices are so high now,” said Do, an applied mathematics major. “I have a lot of friends that don’t want to live in the dorms because they think it is too expensive. They’ve looked at privately owned apartments, and they think they are just a lot cheaper.”
How much cheaper is hard to quantify, as there are as many configurations of rentals in and around Westwood as there are students who need them. Prices vary with building age, size, condition, location and amenities.
But all things being equal, UCLA housing officials, with the help of an outside appraiser, report their campus apartments are below market rates by as much as 6% to 30%.
Yet, when looking at a wider swath of rentals, the university’s rates are well above the average. An annual UCLA survey of rental rates from Westwood Village, Mar Vista and Palms found that the average rental is $1,827 a month, while UCLA’s current monthly on-campus apartment rate is $2,346. Rents in Westwood Village alone run from $1,800 to $2,400 a month for a two-bedroom, according to Foraker.
Although rental prices have gone up in the area over the last five years, none have risen as much as those of UCLA’s own apartments.
Westwood, Mar Vista and Palms apartments have gone up 13.5%, according to UCLA Community Housing. And rates in Westwood Village have increased by 10% to 15%, said Mark Verge, owner of Westside Rentals.com. Meanwhile, rates of UCLA-owned apartments have risen 47.9%.
Even though campus apartment increases have outpaced market rates of late, Foraker said he believes the trend is short-term. “Having 4,000 more beds coming online will make us a bigger player,” he said. “When you increase competition, it helps keep a lid on pricing.”
At UC Irvine, where several housing complexes are set to open this fall and more will be phased in over the next two years, rent increases also are outpacing market rates, in part to pay for construction.
Over the last five years, UC Irvine-owned apartment rates have risen by 25.7% and campus dorms by 36.2%, according to data provided by school housing officials. Market-rate rentals have risen 17.8%, reported RealFacts, a Novato, Calif., research firm that tracks rentals of apartment complexes of 100 units or more.
“There is a dynamic tension ... around the need for more housing at as high of a standard as possible while still keeping it affordable,” said Bill Zeller, assistant vice chancellor of student housing at UC Irvine. “There is not a perfect solution.”
Market rates near UC Santa Barbara have gone up 21% in five years, according to data collected by the school’s housing office. During that time, UC Santa Barbara’s cost for an on-campus apartment has gone up 36.4% and for a dorm room, 36.7%. Currently, a two-bedroom university apartment runs about $1,584 a month, while a similar-size rental in the community is about $1,758.
But some UC campuses, even with construction-driven rate increases, have managed to keep their rents below market levels.
UC Riverside, which will take on $205 million in building costs during the housing construction campaign, is an example.
Private rentals near campus have increased 41.6% the last five years, primarily because of population and job growth, while university-owned apartments have gone up 16.3% and dorm rooms, 26.8%.
“We are trying to be sensitive” to rising costs, said Andy Plumley, director of housing at UC Riverside. “We have more students here on financial aid.”
Off campus, where two-bedroom units average $1,100 a month and up, Plumley said he more often hears of students signing up four to a two-bedroom unit to try to cut costs. “I hear complaints about roommates all the time.”
The growth for UC is a welcome challenge for university officials, especially in this time of state budget cuts and rising tuition costs.
“Residence halls are a priority, but so is housing for single students, families and expanding graduate housing as well,” said Greg Wineger, a manager with UC’s office of the president. “There is a sense of urgency to this.”
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Allison B. Cohen can be reached at a.cohen@ix.netcom.com.
