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Silicon Valley University Asks Professors To Offer Students Affordable Housing (fortune.com)
Housing in Silicon Valley is getting so expensive that the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) petitioned 6,000 faculty and staff members to consider offering students "a room in your home." The college's housing director David Keller wrote in a letter that there are "several hundred students" at the university who don't have "housing guarantees" and need support. Fortune reports: Silicon Valley is notorious for its high living costs. And, according to the report, Santa Cruz and its surrounding areas have far more single-family homes than affordable apartments. Worse yet, a senior at UCSC told the CBS affiliate that some "landlords are kind of jacking up the prices because they know about this." The student, Leon Pham, told CBS that he'll pay $1,100 per month for a small room in a shared house.
Still, there are potentially negative implications to schools asking for professors to rent rooms in their homes to students. Professors are still required to fairly judge student work, and a healthy separation between professors and students is usually what colleges want. The housing crunch, however, might have forced the university's hand. And a spokesperson from the school told CBS that the college has policies that govern "the conduct of students and professors."
Still, there are potentially negative implications to schools asking for professors to rent rooms in their homes to students. Professors are still required to fairly judge student work, and a healthy separation between professors and students is usually what colleges want. The housing crunch, however, might have forced the university's hand. And a spokesperson from the school told CBS that the college has policies that govern "the conduct of students and professors."
Santa Cruz is in Silicon Valley?
The university could set up its own living accommodations. That way, students could live right on university property, at a reduced rate, instead of having to hunt for overpriced spaces in the town. They could make them basic, 150-square-foot living quarters - room, bed, with a communal bathroom - without all of the bells and whistles that seem to make university living cost so much.
There's an ancient word for such living spaces: "dormitories."
Half the professors are probably already living in their cars themselves.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The faculty and most of the staff are almost as screwed over as the students themselves. They're not the comfortably tenured gentry with huge studies in lavish mansions some people are thinking of. It's the top brass that have locked down that lifestyle for themselves. In turn, rich landlords who've inherited ownership to huge sprawls of real estate the normal person can hardly afford a closet in are the price-gouging profiteers with little interest in the actual health of those living there. I think the ones renting out giant victorians they got with their trust fund just to cover their monthly wine bill - yes I'm thinking of specific actual people I've encountered - are the ones whose resources exceed their current contribution or merit, and might need to foot some extra bills. Hey, they used to call that noblesse oblige.
We live in the age of #metoo. Any professor that would house a student is just asking to lose their career.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Is this legal?
In my country it is illegal for students to live in the home of any of their teachers unless they are related because the teachers are in a de facto position of power over the students.
It creates a slippery slope of potential problems including things like molestation "hey, want to be kicked out of the school? Don't tell anyone what happened."
It's legal for teachers in America to allow students to live with them?
Any professor dumb enough to do this deserves whatever they get, particularly if the student is female.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
and put dormitories in it's place.
But we'll never do THAT
I wonder how many of them are allowing a student to shack up with them, since they're the ones with the big houses? If they're not leading by example, they're being hypocritical.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
"a senior at UCSC told the CBS affiliate that some 'landlords are kind of jacking up the prices because they know about this.'"
Isn't supply and demand day one in business school?
lose != loose
Do what I did and pitch a tent in the redwoods behind campus. Bonus: You can tell your advisor a cougar ate your dissertation.
Fiat Slug!
Previously ridiculous stories about how people are trying to cope with the housing crisis are becoming commonplace, but all of it is a band-aid. The real problem is that the Bay Area has refused, city by city, to build sufficient new housing. Delusional NIMBY homeowners believe that they can block all new development and prevent their city from ever changing. Meanwhile, their children moved out of state, service workers commute hours each way coming in from Stockton, car traffic gets worse because so few can live near transit, and nobody new can move in save a few tech workers.
Santa Cruz is part of the University of California system. It doesn't need to move. There are other UC campuses across the state. As well as numerous California State University system campuses as well.
Santa Cruz's draw is that it is in low density coastal forested hilly region. It is not like San Francisco nor Silicon Valley.
Any SJSU takers ?
http://www.sjsuspartans.com/sp...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
If I may add a little perspective here, When adjusted for inflation that is within a factor two of what I paid for a small one room apartment above a drugstore on the intersection of State and Packard in Ann Arbor while I was an engineering student at the University of Michigan. This problem is NOT new by any means.
{o.o}
that was running a food drive for their own employees. Nothing like asking others to deal with the problems you caused yourself.
Why should the students get special treatment over the swaths of blue-collar workers with the same problem?
Oh that's right, secretaries janitors and food service employees aren't a blip on their radar.
How about asking the corporate officers of these companies to pitch in and host a bunch of people in their mansions?
Oh that's right, most rich people expect the peasants to shoulder the burden.
If you can't afford to live in your college town, too bad - take a course in Econ 101 and read up on supply/demand.
Everything about this story is wrong, or at least half-assed. Santa Cruz is not in the silly valley, first and foremost. It is on the other side of the Santa Cruz mountains from there. Second, and more importantly, it ignores the cause of the situation entirely: it is 100% the university's fault. They are behind even their own promises to build housing. The current debate is over whether they should build some in "the meadow", an empty field which lies between the campus and the town. They promised never to build there and a lot of people are angry that they are even suggesting it, but there is nowhere better suited. Not only is it ideally located, but to build anywhere else would require cutting a bunch of redwoods. The ultimate in nimbyism is not wanting UCSC to build student housing in their OWN back yard. Regardless, they promised many years ago to build more student housing, and they have not done so.
Not providing enough student housing but expanding admissions has really put the screws to everyone else. Less than 10% of the people I knew growing up still live there. Most of them have moved quite far away. The majority of the remainder had special help from their parents, like being given an entire house.
I am not opposed to the very existence of the college, like many older native Santa Cruzans, but its mismanagement does irk me.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The students is mid-California need an app for this. Maybe USCBnB?
Well I chose a college in a town that wasn't crazy expensive to live in, worked part time, and lived within my means. Very little debt when I finally graduated. So capitalism worked out just fine for me.
There must be an exception for students who live locally. Myself and friends who applied to our local (local as living in the same town as the campus) UC campus and no others had no problems getting in. 3 CS, 2 EE, decades ago.
No problem a decade ago with a different UC campus that was local to home and work, again, all three in the same town. Grad school this time.
Decades ago the most economical housing solution was getting together with three others you knew and trust and the four of you rent a four bedroom house near campus. Not sure how practical this is today.
Santa Cruz is not Silicon Valley. It is a coastal community with hills and forests and mountains between it and Silicon Valley. The UC campus is semi secluded and borders forest and fields that are preserves or otherwise legally not developable. Its not like other UC campuses that were literally built on the edge of town and were quickly surrounded by apartments within walking distance of campus.
The simplest solution is to allow professors to host only students of different majors so that it's very unlikely they will ever be in a class together.
The UC system is not a trade school, it is a university, you will be taking classes outside of your major so that you acquire a broad and more complete education.
And yet, areas as far away as Oakland are affected.
For smart people, these corporations in Silicon Valley (proper) are incredibly short-sighted—either that, or they don't give a shit about the community they are located in.
Can't see any way that this could abused!
Somebody is geography-challenged. If you are crossing over to "Silicon Valley", you wouldn't cross the Bay Bridge.
I congratulate your intelligence in being able to follow this very short thread successfully. Congratulations!
They take the students' money, and have no accommodations for living.
Another scam.
It's even more of a scam than you think. UCSC promised to build more housing decades ago and didn't. That's how we got to where we are now. Literally twenty years ago I had to rent a room in a house because I couldn't afford anything else, and I was working for Cisco at the time. Part of that was that they were sleazy enough to never pay me a real wage; they hired me as an intern to be a lab admin in spite of my not being a student anywhere, and they promised to convert my position to full-time and then never did so I left to work as sysadmin for Gay.com which was both a better job and came with better pay. The other part was that Santa Cruz has had a housing shortage literally since the university opened, because they never built enough housing.
Now they're trying to build more, but an endangered (or maybe just threatened) frog was found on the originally planned site, so they split the plan to move some of the housing into a Meadow that they originally classified as not for development. There's no legal restriction preventing them, as far as I can tell; I read several articles on the subject and literally none of them claim that there is any such. But some UCSC residents and alumni are trying to NIMBY it out of existence in spite of the fact that it's not their back yard, it's UCSC's front yard. They're all upset that UCSC wants to displace some cows so that they can house students. Problem is, if they put it anywhere else they'd have to cut redwoods, and then you get tree-sitters moving in to prevent that from happening. In fact, a study has indicated that about twice as many people oppose tree-cutting as oppose development of the meadow.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Silicon Valley is generally described by people in the area as stretching up to San Francisco and down to Santa Cruz. And the housing struggle is pretty much the same all the way down, although it gets better in the Santa Cruz area.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
It appears the writer or Slashdot editor has zero clue about what a "valley" is and fails to realize that Santa Cruz is a city located on the coast of California, on the other side of the Santa Cruz Mountains which separate it from the actual geographical valley referred to as Silicon Valley.
That clarified, 12 years ago I happened to look for affordable housing in the communities surrounding Santa Cruz (the city itself has been trashed by drug addicts and illegal aliens.) Pricing for a room in someone's home back in 2006 was $950 a month, apartment started at $1,250. I can't imagine it has gotten any better now.
Also, the reason that area is filled with single family homes is due to white flight as people escaped the valley to live in peace from the melting pot of Silicon Valley. NIMBY Democrats are strong in that area and will fight tooth and nail against apartments, especially low-income apartments, being built anywhere near them.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Congratulations on your excellent life-decision-making skill!
Lived there. We called it by both terms, frequently. Silicon Valley stretched all the way from San Francisco to SantaClara, and was the tech corridor. Nobody EVER said it didn't include San Francisco. Time to get out of the 90s and learn modern reality.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I suggest you stop tilting at windmills, people, including the people who live there, haven't considered "Silicon Valley" to be a synonym for "Santa Cruz Valley" for a good 20 years. San Francisco was considered part of the Valley when I was first doing tours there on interviews 20 years ago. You may not like it, but its reality.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I'm glad I posted as AC so there is no record of me proving I'm an idiot.
FTFY.
J