Quick Take
UC Santa Cruz students face one of the toughest rental markets in the county and the university is not doing enough to help protect students from irresponsible and negligent landlords, says recent graduate Tommy Balmat. Here, Balmat chronicles his own struggle with a negligent landlord and calls on UCSC to offer more resources so students know how to better navigate the market and defend themselves.
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When my UC Santa Cruz buddies and I became juniors in 2022, the housing guaranteed to us by the university expired, and our quest for off-campus housing commenced. After weeks of scouring listings and coming up with cramped one-bedrooms and isolated, woodland shacks, we settled on a shoebox-shaped, two-bedroom apartment decently close to campus.
The $4,000 rent made us shudder, but split four ways, we could just barely scrape by. The property owner – I’ll call him Jeremy – seemed friendly, teasing us not to throw “ragers” once the place was ours. We signed the lease and celebrated (responsibly).
We soon realized Jeremy wasn’t committed to making the house livable.
The lease guaranteed window coverings, but he always said he was too busy to install them. That’s when he bothered to respond to our texts at all. When the garbage disposal broke and brown sludge flooded the sink, Jeremy fiddled with it briefly before saying the problem was beyond his expertise.
We’d conducted diligent, responsible research into each potential rental, comparing utility rates, counting parking spots, and measuring walks to bus stops. But we neglected to consider one major factor no one had warned us about: the guy who owned the place.
Our predicament – not uncommon among students – was an unfortunate consequence of UCSC’s housing shortage. UCSC provides rooms for more than 50% of its students, but it also abandons nearly 10,000 students like me to the perilous Santa Cruz housing market.
Santa Cruz is one of the most expensive housing markets in the country for renters. According to data from Places4Students, the median rent for a two-bedroom house in Santa Cruz is $3,843 a month, nearly $2,500 higher than the national average.
When I was a freshman in 2020, students were guaranteed on-campus housing until their junior year. Now, only first-years enjoy such security.
It’s no wonder landlords charge so much. They do it because they can get it. But it’s unconscionable for the university to allow its students to get cheated and mistreated.
UCSC can’t offer everyone housing, but it should do a better job making sure students are protected as tenants. At the very least, it should educate students on the risky reality of rentals in Santa Cruz County.
Here is what the university does offer: A community rentals page provides information to students about choosing an apartment and our rights as tenants. However, the website includes no student voices, no stories or individual perspectives, which are the most valuable tools undergrads can use to form a realistic impression of life beyond the dorms. Moreover, the website itself is hard to find, buried beneath an avalanche of tabs and external links.
Students would benefit from personable, candid guidance on communicating with property owners. This could take the form of in-person workshops or a counselor network. UCSC does offer an asynchronous renter’s workshop, but it is not something I or any of my friends knew about or used.
An overhauled community rentals page should feature prominently in orientation packages. The university could send students reminder emails with links to resources before their guaranteed housing expires. This would ensure students like me know where to turn if they fear their landlord is attempting to take advantage once they’ve moved into off-campus housing.
The site could also include red flags to look for in a bad landlord and other useful tips for first-time renters.
The most important strategy I learned in my travails with Jeremy was to document everything. For example, the property listing advertised a washer and dryer, but the house contained neither. Before we signed the lease, Jeremy assured us he intended to install them within the next few weeks. After we submitted our $6,000 security deposit, he abruptly changed his mind. If we had only got his word in writing, we likely could have forced him to fulfill his promise. Taking photos of existing imperfections in the house would have given me and my roommates leverage when it came time to negotiate the return of the deposit.
I had the most success dealing with Jeremy once I’d familiarized myself with my rights and overcome my squeamishness toward confrontation. For example, he once visited the apartment to inspect our smoke alarm, which had a habit of spontaneously erupting at 2 a.m. Jeremy and I triggered the alarm and took turns balancing on a folding chair, mashing the power button, praying the infernal device would relent.
After what felt like 20 minutes, it did, only for Jeremy to say he didn’t notice a problem. Politely, but firmly, I reminded him that the lease obliged him to fix broken appliances and that surely the screaming machine in our ceiling wasn’t working as intended. Eventually, he replaced the alarms.
Of course, offering advice on dodging sketchy landlords is a minor fix to the larger issue of the crippling housing crisis.
Students might not need these resources if it weren’t for UCSC’s opaque, inconsistent housing policies. This year, UCSC moved from a priority-based housing system to a lottery. Students might not have received their housing assignments until late August, after summer classes ended. The narrow window inspires a mad scramble for housing in the weeks before the start of spring quarter. It becomes all too easy for property owners to take advantage of frantic college students with limited or no renting experience.
That anxiety distracts from essential aspects of the college experience.
In the final weeks of my sophomore year, I struggled to keep my eyes on my textbooks and off the Zillow homepage, which seemed to stare at me from my open laptop. Passing my exams wouldn’t matter if I didn’t have a place to live. When you’re worried about homelessness, it’s tough to focus on landing a summer job or securing an internship. Not to mention, you know, enjoying college. And life.
Before I moved out of Jeremy’s apartment in late August, he hosted an open house to advertise the property. No one showed up. I was delighted.
I expected Jeremy to be disappointed or concerned, or maybe reflect on his role in perpetuating a parasitic economic system. Instead, he just shrugged. He knew the house would fill up eventually.
“Students need a place to live,” he said, with infuriating nonchalance.
As much as it pains me to say it, he’s right: Students will accept exorbitant prices, dungeon-like conditions, and piss-poor service because they are so desperate to find housing. UCSC is complicit in injustice, not just by denying undergraduates dorms, but also by refusing to prepare students for what they’ll be facing in the Wild West that is the Santa Cruz housing market.
UCSC needs to update its flawed approach to student housing. Otherwise, my old pal Jeremy will continue to be right for a long time.
Tommy Balmat is an independent reporter based in the Bay Area. He graduated from UC Santa Cruz in June 2024.
FOR THE RECORD: This story was updated to include a reference and link to a renter’s workshop offered by UCSC.