Project Overview
This commentary examines housing insecurity as a condition that shapes whether students can pursue higher education with stability, safety, and dignity. It traces the crisis through increased enrollment, rising rents, inflation, landlord exploitation, insufficient housing supply, and institutional responses that prioritize capacity and revenue over humane living conditions.
The article moves between structural critique and personal testimony, addressing overcrowded rooms, converted garages and closets, mold, leaks, and delayed repairs, along with the pressure placed on young tenants who have few realistic alternatives.
The Housing Crisis Among College Students
Housing insecurity has become rampant in college towns. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, this crisis peaked in the summer of 2021. Students who were expecting a continued closure of university facilities due to the pandemic learned they would be required to be on campus in the fall. Many students had not secured housing for the 2021 to 2022 school year, and resorted to renting rooms in strangers' houses or living out of their cars or vans.
The causes of housing insecurity at this institution, and many other universities across the country, include increased rates of student acceptance in pursuit of tuition revenue, rising inflation rates that make affordable housing a competitive pursuit, and the simple greed of absentee landlords who take advantage of a student's need to secure housing.
The proposed solution to this housing insecurity at UC Santa Barbara was the Munger Hall dormitory, which would house over four thousand students, more than ninety percent of them in rooms with no windows or outside light. This proposal received country-wide outrage and criticism, another example of the corporate greed and dehumanization students must shoulder in pursuit of higher education.
Securing housing is not the end of a student's housing crisis. Students often end up in bedrooms converted from garages, living rooms, and even closets, sharing cramped quarters with two or more roommates. This compounds discomfort that is often overlooked as an expected part of the college experience.
These unconventional living conditions stand in opposition to the stable environment conducive to learning, and they affect the overall well-being of students, underscoring the urgent need for educational institutions to address the housing crisis. At the time of writing, the author's Isla Vista apartment was affected by mold outbreaks on bathroom and kitchen ceilings and multiple leaks in the bedroom ceiling and window.
As a college student, what choice remains but to live in these under-regulated and under-renovated apartments and houses? Absentee landlords allow property quality to diminish over time without consequence, leaving tenants in dangerous health situations and difficult mental health circumstances, waiting on repairs that should have been actively maintained.
References
Raines, Shirley. "UCSB Housing Students in Crisis." KCRW.