Dorm life at Sacramento State suited Sofia Gonzalez. Living on campus her first year, most classes were a 10-minute walk away — and most of her closest friends lived in the same residence hall.
“Everything,” she said, was “right there.”
But this summer, as she prepared to start her sophomore year, friends who applied for university housing warned Gonzalez they had been placed on a wait list. Daunted by the limited supply of dorms and the cost of on-campus housing rent, Gonzalez opted to try the private market instead.
“There was nowhere I could live in my price range near campus,” said Gonzalez, a business and marketing major. She contemplated transferring to a community college or commuting two hours each way from her parents’ Bay Area home to Sacramento.
Housing can be a major barrier for low-income students like Gonzalez throughout the California State University system, which includes Sacramento State and 21 other campuses. Recent estimates have found that housing accounts for half the cost of attendance at CSU, and that 11% of CSU students surveyed experience homelessness or housing insecurity.
That reality is one reason why CSU added more than 17,000 new beds between 2014 and 2024. About 5,600 more are either under construction or approved to be built. The investments in housing are giving CSU a more residential flavor, even as many campuses maintain their long-standing dependence on commuters.
A systemwide housing plan issued by CSU in July sketches potential projects that could house an additional 12,600 students as soon as 2030.
Now the question is whether CSU should build more housing, especially in hot real estate markets where students struggle to find off-campus alternatives. With declining enrollment at some campuses, housing needs are uneven. Systemwide, 92% of student housing is filled, but at shrinking campuses such as Sonoma State and Cal State East Bay, only 64% and 58% of housing, respectively, was occupied in fall 2024.
CSU officials say on-campus housing improves students’ graduation rates and could ease pressures for their 460,000 students, 87% of whom live off campus with their families or otherwise.
State lawmakers are weighing a potentially hefty 2026 bond measure for the state’s three public university systems: the University of California, CSU and California Community Colleges. Supporters say the bond measure, which does not yet have a dollar amount affixed, could help make college more affordable for low-income students.
If lawmakers and then voters approve a bond measure, housing projects would probably compete with the three systems’ substantial deferred maintenance needs.
At Cal State Northridge, which plans to open a new 198-bed housing complex this fall, 2,000 students were on a waiting list for housing in fall 2024, CSU data show. Kevin Conn, the university’s executive director of student housing and residential life, said his colleagues field regular calls from students desperate for student housing.
“Their stories are really, really heart-wrenching, because we can only do so much,” he said. “We can’t just put them in; there’s no spot to put them.”
Sacramento State has faced a similar conundrum. Last fall, there were more than 4,400 students who requested to live in campus housing, but fewer than 3,300 beds were available. The campus plans to house hundreds of additional students in the coming years.
In the meantime, Gonzalez’s frantic housing search ended when she found an $800-a-month room 30 minutes from campus. While within her budget, she will probably need a second job to afford rent and groceries. “It’s going to be hard this next year to manage my money,” she said.
A push into housing at CSU
California State University has a long history of serving predominantly commuter students, though the university system has made major investments in student housing over the past two decades. Federal data show CSU has almost doubled its capacity to house students since 2004.
CSU’s housing continues to trail the University of California system, which houses 40% of its students. That’s more than 120,000 students in UC housing compared with roughly 60,000 across CSU. A majority of students in both systems live off campus.
CSU officials say adding more university housing will boost students’ academic performance, pointing to internal university data from San Diego State, which found students living on campus had higher graduation rates and grade-point averages as well as lower rates of academic probation compared with their off-campus peers.
University officials said they strive to keep student housing affordable relative to peer institutions and nearby market-rate units.
In 2024, the CSU-wide average rate for a two-person unit in a residence hall was $9,668 over an academic year. Cal Poly Humboldt hosted the cheapest doubles, charging $6,624 on average, while San Diego State’s $14,344 average was the system’s most expensive.
Lawmakers weigh student housing policy
Reports of college students living in their cars and surveys revealing the scale of student homelessness have prompted state lawmakers to take a more aggressive approach to student housing in recent years.
Typically, CSU finances housing by issuing bonds. But California lawmakers took a more active role in 2021 when they established a $2.2-billion grant program to help fund housing across CSU, UC and community colleges.
A dozen projects at CSU have been named grant recipients to date. Altogether, the projects are expected to add 5,000 beds to campuses from Cal Poly Humboldt to San Diego State. The grants provided about $660 million, which was nearly half the cost of 12 CSU projects, while the system provided the rest.
In addition, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo has launched its own creative solution. Next fall, the university will install the first in a series of modular, factory-built housing units, aiming to add as many as 4,000 beds over several years. Housing modules will be “stacked on top of each other like Legos,” said Mike McCormick, the university’s vice president of facilities management and development.
The hope is that as the factory starts producing modules at scale, the cost to make each one will drop.
“We’re a long way from having this be a really efficient process yet, but you have to start somewhere,” McCormick said.
DiPierro is a reporter for EdSource, a nonprofit, nonpartisan journalism organization covering education in California.
The post Thousands of Cal State students require housing. But can the university system meet the need? appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
