Tyler Hayden
This story was originally published by the and is reproduced here in partnership with Edhat.
By Tyler Hayden of The Independent
UC Santa Barbara is facing a significant housing shortage for incoming students this fall, with online message boards and social media platforms alight with hundreds of desperate freshmen and transfers looking for places to live. Many fear they will be forced to sleep in their cars when the quarter begins on September 27, or commute long distances to reach the Central Coast campus.
A Change.org petition started last Thursday ― lambasting UCSB for leaving its students high and dry and calling on the university to negotiate bedspace with local motels ― has generated more than 1,600 signatures. Its creator, Dino Vicencio, said he’s been looking for off-campus housing since May with no luck. “There’s just nothing out there,” he said.
An incoming transfer from Los Angeles Valley College, Vicencio said he started the petition once he began connecting with other students facing the same challenge. “This isn’t something new,” he said, referencing recent reports that UCSB has fallen dramatically behind on building new housing. “They’ve known about this for years. That’s what got me really upset.” If he can’t find a place soon, Vicencio said, he’ll likely commute to campus via the Surfliner train from his home in L.A. to Goleta, a four-hour round-trip.
Sarah Jochum said she’s in the same boat. “As happy as I am to be admitted,” she said, “the university admitted more students than there is housing in Santa Barbara, and that’s a problem.” Jochum said she was informed Tuesday by a UCSB representative that she is one of 900 students on a waitlist for university housing, and that there is a very limited availability of off-campus housing due to the pandemic.
While the number of on-campus units has not changed from pre-pandemic years, she was told, COVID-19 has pushed many incoming students to room alone or with just one other person in Isla Vista ― the adjacent community where the bulk of UCSB students reside ― as opposed to the normal-year routine of cramming three or four bodies to a room.
“There is a large group of students who have money in-hand but are planning on living in their cars because they can’t find an apartment,” she said. “We really need the community’s help in pressuring the university to come up with solutions.”
Things have gotten so bad that UCSB’s Community Housing Services department even put out a call to faculty and staff this week asking them to consider opening their homes to incoming students. “Please also spread the word to your non-UCSB community contacts,” the message reads.
Shelly Leachman, a spokesperson for UCSB, said the university is aware of the problem and working on it. “Currently,” she said, “we are planning to maximize our campus housing and are exploring several options to assist students who are having a difficult time finding housing as a result of several factors in the community, including a tight rental market in the Santa Barbara area and many reports of I.V. residents choosing lower-density living situations.”
Leachman noted that UCSB is not alone in the current housing crunch. “Many campuses are experiencing similar circumstances,” she said. “As we have done in past years, we communicate with our campus community to explore options for students seeking housing accommodations.”
Those assurances, though, have been cold comfort to students who are still unsure what the fall will hold. “My friends and I have been searching for an apartment for months but can’t find one,” wrote Romina Aratesh on the petition. “We are legitimately considering taking a quarter or two off due to lack of housing. UCSB needs to do better!”
We need more people to come into this area of FINITE housing opportunities. Those propeller-head-professors probably don’t understand that Santa Barbara has the Mountains on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other… I guess they just don’t “get it”… So much for higher education.
UCSB and SBCC alike.
Agreed!
Who cares. Live your life
Plenty of well priced mobile homes still in this area. Others manage to come here and make it work. Take a drive through our many mobile home parks, and learn how others have done it.
….”so HIGH” compared to other places
New SBCC President came from Southwestern College near the border and recently passed several hundred million dollars of construction bonds, which now sit on her former district’s property taxes. Southwestern College also built student dorms. Keep an eye on her and the SBCC board, in case they hired her to find magic answers for their own declining enrollment numbers. Taxing locals to build dorms for out of district students is never the answer.
soorry but “This isn’t something new,” he said, referencing recent reports that UCSB has fallen dramatically behind on building new housing.”
the entire state has fallen horribly behind in housing for EVERYONE
agreed St george is pushing some bad news
says the user name “get off my lawn”
This is what happens when an institution forgets it purpose and instead lets the desires and wants (egos) of the administration and its benefactors drive the direction and the choices… Look around, every single large public institution has been overtaken by greedy, over-zealous, self focused, bureaucrats acting in their own interests. Every school. Every institution, every division, every department in the state is overrun by these cretins. They claim they’re educators working for the future, but the only future these people are interested in developing is theirs… Public education has become a business – which would be fine, except these institutions are being managed by the worst business people in our society; Academics.
This is the human condition, right? I see it in all organizations although the public agencies are the easiest to pick on. Let me know when you come up with the solution to people being human.
Well Pit I hate to be the one to break it to you but society invented things called rules, laws, requirements , procedures, necessities, adherence, compliance, etc. to manage these “conditions”. But thanks for another prolific post. You never miss an opportunity to tell us what you’ve personally seen and experienced on your daily journey between W Mission St and Ventura…
Correction: any attempt to house EVERYONE is what would be horrid.
Transitions to virtual learning would eliminate the current vast armies of teacher union members, since one talking head is all you need for any subject matter. I can support this trend.
For every “rule” you can quote, I can give you an example of when it was broken. Society functions on the hope that we will all obey the golden rule, and the last 4 yrs has shown you how fragile that agreement is.
The supply has also been constrained this year by the ‘no eviction’ edicts. People are choosing not to build apartments or rent rooms if they don’t get rent. Just another unintended consequence…