Quick Take
UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Cynthia Larive writes that the university is taking community and student concerns about housing and traffic seriously and outlines UCSC’s efforts to address both persistent community concerns. She highlights new and planned projects that she says will increase student housing by more than 40% within a decade, including a two-year housing guarantee for incoming students. Larive also writes that campus vehicle trips are lower than they were 20 years ago, despite enrollment growth, and says UCSC will continue taking responsibility for its impact on the broader Santa Cruz community.
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Fall quarter is in full swing at UC Santa Cruz. Our students are back, classes are well underway and the campus is alive with the energy of another academic year. This is a good moment to talk directly about two issues that understandably come up whenever people discuss our campus and our relationship with the greater community: housing and traffic.
Both are real challenges in Santa Cruz, and both are areas where our university has an important responsibility. We have spent years working to house more of our students and reduce the number of people driving solo to campus.
We are seeing meaningful results, even as we continue to push forward on both fronts.
Santa Cruz’s housing challenges have no single cause, and they will not have a single solution. UC Santa Cruz has an important role to play, though, and we have been working hard to do our part. That is why I was thrilled to announce this summer a new two-year housing guarantee for incoming first-year and transfer students.
For students and their families, this guarantee provides something vitally important: peace of mind.
Students can now spend their first two years focused on finding their footing, building friendships and succeeding academically rather than worrying about where they will live after their first year. It also benefits the broader Santa Cruz community by keeping more students in university housing and easing some of the pressure on the local rental market.
We were able to make that commitment because we have been deliberate about our enrollment and because our years of work to add more student housing are beginning to bear fruit. This new housing is not just for first-year students and sophomores, either; much of it is aimed at providing housing for upper-division students — juniors and seniors — meaning more students can live in university housing beyond their second year.
This fall, our new Delaware Apartments in Santa Cruz’s Westside neighborhood opened for about 350 upper-division undergraduates and more than 60 employees. Also this fall, students who are raising families while pursuing their degree have started moving into some of the 120 on-campus apartments that comprise our new family student housing community. These modern units replace ones built more than a half-century ago. They are next door to our new Early Education Center and walking distance to Westlake Elementary School.
Meanwhile, our Kresge College renewal project, which is tripling the number of beds at the residential college to about 900, is quickly moving toward completion. Students began occupying beds completed in the first phase of the project in fall 2023, and more than 200 new beds became available there this fall.
We are not stopping there.
Our new partnership with Cabrillo College will create housing for about 250 UC Santa Cruz students beginning next September. It’s the project you see rising as you drive on Highway 1 in Aptos. Supported by a state grant, this project is designed to provide affordable student housing and strengthen the University of California transfer pathway between Cabrillo and our campus. Looking further ahead, our on-campus Heller Student Housing South project will house nearly 1,300 upper-division students. UC regents approved the project earlier this year. We expect those beds to come online in 2029.
Taken together, these projects are part of an ambitious effort to increase UC Santa Cruz student housing by more than 40% within a decade.
The scale of that housing commitment often gets lost in broader conversations about university growth.
For example, our 2021 long-range development plan (LRDP) identifies the capacity for our campus to one day accommodate up to 28,000 students. That number is often treated as a growth promise or prediction.
It’s neither of those things.
A long-range development plan is just that: long-range planning. The UC regents rightly require us to detail what our campus would look like if enrollment were to grow. That makes sure we have thought responsibly about housing, classrooms, research space, transportation and other infrastructure. Doing so does not and will not dictate growth.
Actual enrollment decisions depend on many factors including state funding, student demand and, importantly, our ability to adequately serve additional students.
Our most recent LRDP makes a simple commitment: If UC Santa Cruz grows beyond 19,500 students, we will add enough housing to accommodate that growth. In other words, if our enrollment grows, our housing will grow with it.
Housing, of course, is not the only way a university impacts its community.
Traffic has long been a concern in Santa Cruz, which is why we have worked to reduce the number of people driving alone to campus. Today, nearly two-thirds of weekday trips are made by Metro bus, bike, walking, carpool, vanpool or other alternatives, with about half of commuters arriving by bus. Working remotely from alternate locations has also become much more common among employees since the pandemic.
Here is a fact that surprises people when I share it: The number of vehicle trips to UC Santa Cruz is actually lower today than it was 20 years ago, when our total enrollment was 15,000.
None of this means we have solved every challenge our community collectively faces. We haven’t. Housing in Santa Cruz is still too expensive for so many people. Traffic can still be maddening. But I’m proud of the progress we are making. We have added significantly more housing, and more projects are in the works. Fewer vehicles are traveling to and from campus than 20 years ago.
This is real progress, and we intend to build on it.
We know that the effects of campus decisions extend beyond the edge of our campus. Being part of this community means listening to our neighbors, planning carefully and taking responsibility for the impacts we can control. That approach will continue to guide us in the years ahead.
As we welcome our students to campus this fall, we will keep working to ensure our students thrive here, while also preserving the qualities that make Santa Cruz such an extraordinary place to live, learn and work for all of us.
Chancellor Cynthia Larive is starting her eighth year as the leader of UC Santa Cruz.
