Quick Take
UC Santa Cruz students living in family student housing say they don't know how they'll afford a rent increase of $600 a month when they move into a new housing facility later this year. They're demanding the university rescind the increase.
Students living in family housing at UC Santa Cruz are fighting plans by the school to increase monthly rents by $600 when a new residential complex opens on campus later this year. Some say the rent hike, which amounts to $7,200 a year, is unaffordable for families who are already struggling to make ends meet on academic salaries.
UCSC is building a new Family Student Housing complex with 120 apartment units and a child care center with 140 slots on the southern corner of the East Meadow as part of a larger housing project, Student Housing West. The housing complex is reserved for UCSC students who live with a family member including children, a partner/spouse, parent/grandparent or sibling. After the new facility is complete, the existing 200-unit family housing facility on Heller Drive on the west side of campus will be demolished for the construction of more than 2,900 units of undergraduate housing.
The university told residents they expect to start moving families in a phased approach, between fall of this year and January 2026. However, the new facility will come at a higher cost: $2,500 a month for a two-bedroom unit, compared to less than $1,900 for a similar unit at the existing housing complex.
“That’s a lot of money,” said Nate Edenhofer, a politics doctoral student who lives with his wife, Sierra, a UCSC lecturer, and 7-month-old daughter at Family Student Housing. “That could be going to helping our children, paying for child care, paying for a sitter to finish my dissertation. It’s hard.”
The Edenhofers, ages 34 and 33, said housing at the aging existing facility is already unaffordable for families like theirs before the increase. Nate makes $3,400 a month as a teaching assistant. When Sierra has an appointment as a lecturer teaching one class, she makes about $2,300 per class.
However, this month, Sierra is on leave caring for their child, so the couple is paying more than half of their income toward housing, leaving them with just $1,500 to cover their other expenses, including food, utilities and gas for two cars. Nate said he worried about how the couple will make due with higher rent when they’re already not able to save.
Laura Arroyo, associate vice chancellor for Colleges, Housing and Educational Services, told the residents at a January meeting about the planned increase. Nate Edenhofer said residents almost immediately began urging the university to rescind it.
Officials have rejected the repeated requests and told residents that the new complex was costly to build and the higher rents are needed to help cover the expenses.
“The proposed rate increase is necessary to cover rising operational costs, including expenses associated with the new building, staff salaries and utilities,” campus spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason told Lookout. He said the rates continue to be 50% below local market rate for a two-bedroom.
Hernandez-Jason said the university doesn’t yet have a date for the demolition of the existing student family housing building, and he didn’t say when residents have to be moved out of the existing complex.
At an open house organized by UCSC housing officials Tuesday evening at the existing facility, the Edenhofers and other residents told Lookout they would rather stay in the old facility to finish out their programs next year than move to the new facility for just a few months and pay the increased rent.
Last year, tenants at Family Student Housing fought against a $65 monthly rent increase and demanded the university address mold and maintenance issues. The university agreed to give residents a one-time $200 rent credit but didn’t rescind the increase.
“I would say the fact that a lot of us want to stay here instead of the new [facility] is really telling because these apartments are really in poor condition,” said Sierra Edenhofer. “There’s things that would seem to sweeten the deal [like in-unit laundry], but because we’re so rent-burdened, it’s just not worth it.”
At the open house, Nate asked Executive Director of Housing Services Dave Keller if the university could rescind the increase. “That price isn’t changing,” Keller responded, according to Nate.
Lookout asked Hernandez-Jason if the university was considering rescinding the increase, but he didn’t respond by publication time.
Stephanie Hertel, an education doctoral student who lives with her husband and two children at the housing complex, is part of the Family Student Housing Tenants Association, which has been talking with housing officials to rescind the increase. The association is a group of tenants that hosts events and keeps the community updated on housing changes and issues, such as the rent increase.
Between Hertel’s income and what her husband earns at his software engineering job, Hertel said their family isn’t rent-burdened but she’s concerned about her fellow residents and is organizing with them against the rent increase.
“I think it’s terrible,” she said. “I don’t feel comfortable supporting a move that would burden my colleagues and my neighbors.”
She’s also hoping to stay at the old facility. She’s expecting to finish her program at the end of the next academic year and doesn’t want to move her family multiple times.
Hernandez-Jason said families won’t be able to stay in the existing facility beyond the move-out period.
“All operational and staffing support for Family Student Housing will be transitioning to the new facility beginning in the fall, and after this transition is complete, no university services will be available at the current facility. For this reason, we will not be able to accommodate requests to remain in the existing FSH past the transition period.”
Nate Edenhofer said the thought of moving for just a few months overwhelms him: “It’s driving me crazy.” He’s not sure what their family, and others who are rent-burdened, will do about the increase.
Nate, who is represented by the United Auto Worker (UAW) 4811, which won historic raises after striking several years ago, said he feels the university’s plans to hike rents on student housing amount to “clawing back” what the union won in those raises. The contract’s raises for 2023 and 2024 resulted in a 46% increase in salary scales.
He said their contracts have another 4% increase coming in October, but that won’t cover the rent increase. He estimates that raise amounts to $160 a month before taxes.
In addition to worrying about the increased rent, Edenhofer said he’s concerned that the new family housing complex has 80 fewer units than the existing facility.
By reducing the number of affordable child-friendly units on campus, he said he fears some students may put off starting families while in school.
Sierra and Nate Edenhofer said part of the reason they have their daughter today is because they decided to get married in order to increase their chances of getting a coveted spot in the existing UCSC Family Student Housing complex – which is conveniently on campus, and more affordable than most rentals in the area.
“Part of the impetus to get married was that we could get into [the facility],” said Nate, who said being a married couple helped them move up in priority. Once they were living in the more affordable apartment at Family Student Housing, they saved more money and decided they could afford to have a child.
“We moved in and we had a family,” he said. “It helped make it possible.”
FOR THE RECORD: This story has been updated to correct the age of the Edenhofers’ daughter and the estimated wage increase for UAW 4811 members after their upcoming raise.
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