Berkeley Housing Crisis

Context and Overview

Every student knows how hard it is to find housing in Berkeley. In a recent housing survey for undegraduates, graduate students, and post docs that was orchestrated by the UC Berkeley Office of Planning and Analysis (OPA), 10% of all respondents self identified as having not had a stable place to live "for some length of time" while at Berkeley (housing.berkeley.edu). Although some of these respondents, especially among the graduate students and post docs, could have simply been staying with a friend for a few days while looking for a place to live, the results clearly demonstrate how difficult the housing situation is in Berkeley, and not having a place to live for any length of time as an undergraduate is unacceptable. Furthermore, even according to the university itself, there is a growing contingency of students living very far away from campus or who live out of their cars or couch surf for extended periods of time because of a severe lack of adequate affordable housing options (see UC Berkeley's "Housing Master Plan Task Force Report" here). Needless to say, this is a serious problem. More generally, anyone living or working in the Bay Area knows how rents are, in general, extremely expensive. The housing crisis is not new to the Bay Area—in fact it has existed since the 1970s, and has only worsened since then. A lack of space, strict zoning laws, and staunch opposition from neighborhood homeowners and city officials make the development of high density apartment complexes extremely difficult in cities like San Francisco and Berkeley. Currently, there is a movement of young professionals in San Francisco advocating for the abolishment of strict zoning laws and the many bureaucratic obstacles that prevent developers from building and adding supply to the housing market. The slogan of the movement is “YIMBY”—"yes in my backyard!”—as this group of “millennials” is demanding that developers be encouraged to build in order to flood the housing market and thus ultimately reduce rent prices. Through local, bottom-up politics, the YIMBY movement has begun to make progress and has partnered with labor and environmental groups (“Enviros and Developers: A Love Story”).

As the housing crisis pertains to Berkeley students, due to high (and rising) rent prices and lack of enough affordable housing options for financial aid students, lower income students are often forced to face temporary homelessness, live in substandard housing units, or to live outside of Berkeley and have long commutes just to get to campus and back. Clearly, this creates an inequitable distribution of the crucial student necessity of simply living near the university. The purpose of this website is to (1) give a clear visualization of the housing crisis in Berkeley and how it has worsened over time, (2) discuss what needs to be done to address the problem as well as the actions currently being taken by students and the University towards a solution to this problem, and most importantly to (3) raise awareness of the extent to which this issue affects the academic experiences of thousands of undergraduates, graduate students, and post docs who attend or work for UC Berkeley.

Why is this an Environmental Justice issue?

Proponents of environmental justice consider people’s living conditions, neighborhoods, and immediate surroundings to be crucial aspects of “the environment” by definition. It has been shown by many studies that low income people and people of color bear greater health risks from environmental hazards, including a greater risk of lead poisoning from substandard housing establishments, asthma from air pollution, and of cancer from chemical releases by nearby locally unwanted land uses (LULUs), to name a few (Paulose, 524; Mohai et al., 406). I claim, in the spirit of having a holistic definition of what we call “the environment,” that the housing crisis in Berkeley is indeed an environmental justice issue. For one, it by definition affects low income students the most. Furthermore, having a contingency of students, graduate students, and post docs that have a long daily commute to campus not only negatively affects their own ability to focus on their academic work, but it contributes greatly to the carbon footprint of the university and in this way contributes to Berkeley’s unsustainability as an institution. In fact, what is happening in Berkeley is a microcosm of what is going on in metropolitan areas all around California—rents in cities are so high that people who work in the city, including white collar workers and tech professionals, are continually moving outwards into suburbs from which they drive to their jobs on a daily basis, contributing to an inefficient and unsustainable use of city infrastructure as well a very large carbon footprint.

Furthermore, it is conceptually useful to frame this issue as an environmental justice issue. Like many environmental justice issues, the main problem is really simple, and at its crux it comes down to systematic issues that are deeply rooted in an unequal distribution of political influence among different subsectors of a community. Similarly, the solution simply depends on whether or not local regulators and the university choose to address the root of the problem rather than putting a band aid on it, potentially at the expense of the interests of the elite, older, predominantly wealthy and white homeowners who live in Berkeley. Since the problem at its core is simple, my goal in this project is to explain at least the most imporant factors of the housing crisis in a very simple manner, keeping in mind the dire importance of addressing the real root of the issue.

Why should UC Berkeley care?

If the purpose of the university is to construct an environment for the attainment of higher knowledge and truth, then by definition university has a responsibility to ensure that the basic living needs of all admitted students can be met. Undergraduates dealing with the slew of incessant issues that come with housing insecurity are worse able to even focus on their classes and their jobs, let alone spend time participating in the clubs and organizations that really make Berkeley flourish. At Berkeley, graduate students and undergraduate TAs essentially run all of the courses for undergraduates at Berkeley, as well as contributing to research work that contributes to the prestige of the professors and the university itself, so having a large contingency of housing insecure graduate students is bad in many ways for the university. Post docs also teach, run classes on their own, and contribute important research to the university, all for extremely low pay, and so again it hurts the university if post docs cannot afford to live in Berkeley.

Mapping out rent prices in Berkeley

Below is an interactive map that displays the demographics and some rent statistics for each census tract in Alameda county (when it first loads it will be centered on UC Berkeley). This map illustrates why some students move so far away from campus just to find affordable places to live. As you mouse over the map, a popup will appear with the demographics of the census tract that the mouse is currently hovering over. If you mouse over one of the targets (which are located at the centroid of each census tract) a popup will display the median of what each person pays for their rent in that census tract, as well a rough distribution of rent prices in that tract.

Some Shocking Statistics

The animation below illustrates how rents have been rising in the areas surrounding the Berkeley campus at an extreme pace.

Now, lets take a closer look at the maps in those images. Simply mousing over a census tract will give the average (or median, in the map for 1980) rent paid per person in that census tract.

In order to quantify how much affordability of housing in Berkeley has gone down, it is instructive to compare the percent increases in rent to the cumulative inflation rates in each of the preceding decades:

Percent Average Rent Increase vs Cumulative Inflation Rate
Decade	Percent Rent Increase in Alameda County	Cumulative Inflation Rate
1980-1989	145.11%	64.41%
1990-1999	36.20%	33.47%
2000-2009	37.05%	28.31%

The reason that we use average increase in Alameda county is that the average rents in the county are roughly representative of the average rents in the census tracts surrounding the UC Berkeley campus that primarily house students. The increase in rent price is notably much larger than the cumulative inflation rate from 1980-1990 and from 2000-2010. Since inflation rates roughly indicate the wage/salary increases of working class people in the US, this simple chart demonstrates how unaffordable apartments in the Berkeley area are becoming, especially for students.

More About the Root of the Problem and a Path Towards a Solution

If we want to address the root of the problem, we first have to understand what truly causes the problem. Many students at UC Berkeley and residents of the Bay Area tend to believe that the fast growing Silicon Valley tech companies are entirely to blame for the current housing crisis (Kendall). However, this is not nearly the whole story; while tech companies are certainly responsible for bringing in swaths of professional middle and upper-middle class tech workers to the area without working to provide the necessary infrastructure to support them, it is local authorities who must work with these corporations, and with developers, to facilitate this process. Another commonly held viewpoint is that developers are responsible for only building high end housing units, but again in large part this trend can be attributed to local authorities and homeowners (Kendall). As is the case in San Francisco, it is nearly impossible for new developers to come and build high density, affordable housing units. Zoning laws, height restrictions, minimum unit sizes, and requirements for parking facilities drive up the cost of new developments and thus force developers to build higher end apartment complexes (White, 22). Another major barrier for developers is that of having to attend many bureaucratic meetings with government officials and facing fierce opposition from current land and home-owners who vehemently oppose many new projects in order to preserve the aesthetic of Berkeley, and also because they have a vested interest in ensuring that property values do not decrease (White, 8; “Enviros and Developers: A Love Story”). Because of the increases in cost that this entire system causes, private developers cannot come into the city and compete, and thus prices continue to rise unchecked. Furthermore, developers are completely unable to build high density, affordable housing due to development costs imposed by city officials and local regulations.

Instead of pushing developers away with extensive zoning laws, regulations, and planning meetings, city officials need find ways to encourage development. This is not to say that officials should be completely neglecting regulation on new developments or completely sacrificing the architectural integrity of the city. City officials simply need to work to streamline the approval process for new developments so that private developers can come into the city and add the much-needed supply to the market. There should also be areas where height and density minimums are increased, and with lesser requirements for parking provisions, as again this drives down costs, and is sensible anyways since most students do not own cars (and students should in principle be discouraged from keeping a car on campus). The areas surrounding Bart stations are examples of places where loosening of these restrictions would be especially beneficial to the student body and the staff members of the university because it would provide economical housing near campus in a place where residents would certainly not need a car.

The university is well aware of the extent of the issues of student homelessness and the lack of affordable housing in Berkeley, as can be seen in the University's own report (housing.berkeley.edu). The main statistics on student homelessness are from a study conducted by the University itself (specifically a housing taskforce which is affiliated with the Office of Planning and Analysis). Furthermore, the university is working towards building more high density housing for its students, and the housing crisis is in fact being discussed with city and university officials (Kaye). The main solutions being discussed are in line with what is proposed above; they involve changing zoning laws and parking minimums to drive down building costs and support the development of high density, affordable housing in certain areas near campus. In fact, the university is building a new dormitory with over 700 beds on Bancroft and Dana which is (or originally was, at least) slated to open in August; however, it is unlikely that the price of living in this dorm will be lower than market rate housing, which is already too expensive. The issue is also apparent in state level politics as well; California senator Nancy Skinner has proposed an amendment to Senate Bill 1227 in order to encourage developers to build in areas surrounding college campuses. The bill currently awards bonuses to developers who agree to build a certain percentage of units designated for low income housing and in certain cases exempts developers from meeting the usual vehicular parking ratios. The amendment is that a bonus will also be awarded if all units are used for students enrolled full time at a university, and if 20% of the units are specifically designated and set aside for lower income students, in the sense that they are affordable and priority is given to students who have the greatest need for affordable housing.

These discussions simply need to turn into action more quickly, and furthermore no one provision will solve the problem. Berkeley needs to allocate more money for student housing to build even more high density, university affiliated housing units, and especially housing units specifically designed for students that need financial assistance to live in Berkeley, since these are the students that would struggle to be competitive as renters in the Berkeley renting market. UC Berkeley should stand behind the principle that all students accepted to the university should have an equal opportunity to pursue higher education without having to struggle to find housing that meets basic sanitation and living needs. It should do so by addressing the root of the problem and trying to drive development costs down, rather than using money to subsidize costly new housing units that are developed under the City of Berkeley’s current process of planning and regulation. The widespread outcry of the Berkeley student body is for the university to simply ensure that each student has access to housing. Anecdotally, inefficiencies and blatant holes in the bureaucratic administrative systems of the university have repeatedly impacted the well-being of students in concrete ways, and ultimately forced many students into substandard or unsafe living situations.

What Berkeley Students Can Do to Influence Change From the Bottom Up

Up to this point we have only discussed a top down approach towards a solution. Since this is an environmental justice issue, students should make use of the standard techniques that other environmental justice movements have developed. In particular, students should share their stories, attract the attention of local media, and gain support for change from the ground up, starting with UC students. One student organization which already exists and strives to do exactly this is the Homeless Student Union. This organization also serves as a safety net for those who need emergency housing services but cannot access it through the university. The university and the City of Berkeley should be publicly held accountable for the current struggle that many students face. In particular, as UC Berkeley is an exemplar for how successful public higher education can be in the United States, its students must demand that the housing crisis be addressed. If a large group of students can make a concerted, unified effort to raise public awareness for this issue, it is more likely that we will start to see some action towards positive change.