With $3 million from UC Office of the President, UC Santa Cruz is taking a multi-pronged approach to help students as the region and state grapples with an unprecedented housing shortage.
The campus will put $600,000 into Slug Support’s emergency housing program and spend $25,000 to revamp the Community Rentals web portal to increase the usefulness of the self-service resource. The site has proven to be a valuable resource with nearly 300,000 rental ads viewed last year and more than 14,000 rental ad inquiries.
“Affordable housing continues to be a major challenge in Santa Cruz and in other cities with UC campuses,” said Vice Provost for Student Success Jaye Padgett. "These funds will help many of our current and future UC Santa Cruz students.”
UC Santa Cruz will use $1 million to establish $1,500 housing allowances for first-year doctoral students and $1.25 million for transfer students to help them make the transition into the local housing market. The housing allowances are expected to help hundreds of transfer students.
This $3 million in funding became available recently as the result of a July 2017 decision by the UC Board of Regents to reallocate reserve funds from the Mortgage Origination Program (MOP) to put toward housing needs across nine campuses.
With the help of the Blum Center, the campus will spend $125,000 to conduct a study of low income student housing. The goal is to help inform campus practices, establish new resources, and improve housing outcomes for students.
Campus leaders reached out to the Student Union Assembly, Graduate Student Association, Staff Advisory Board, the Academic Senate, and other campus managers to generate ideas for how to use the $3 million and to evaluate the ideas.
