Once again, thousands of UC San Diego students are on waiting lists for housing for the fall quarter, a shortage driven by explosive enrollment growth that’s expected to last for another decade and a dearth of affordable rentals near campus.
But a bold and pricey new plan might finally put the school on the road to relief.
Chancellor Pradeep Khosla will ask University of California regents Wednesday for preliminary permission to create a towering, $2 billion village on the eastern edge of the main campus that would house up to 6,000 students.
It is among the largest and most expensive housing plans presented to the Board of Regents in at least 20 years. The proposed village also would be more than three times bigger than any market-rate residential complex in San Diego County.
Khosla says his proposal is meant to deal with a hard reality: There will never be a big enough supply of affordable housing in the La Jolla and University City area to help the university meet demand.
Enrollment has grown by about 13,000 over the past decade and is expected to rise by about 7,600 during the next 10 to 15 years, pushing UCSD above 50,000.
The university has tried to keep up. Khosa has created a net increase of 9,527 beds through villages he’s built or has under construction. The school will provide a record 22,000 students with accommodations this fall. Nationwide, only UCLA has more university-owned campus housing.
But that’s not nearly enough.
Khosla wants to ease the crunch largely by doubling down on what he’s been doing recently — rapidly constructing tall dorms to maximize the use of the school’s dwindling stock of open land. He has already finished or is constructing six buildings in the 16-to-22-story range, a number that could double through his new proposal. Everything will be located on a 20-acre tract located between the university’s Blue Line trolley station and Interstate 5.
“I want to be able to provide a four-year (housing) guarantee to all my undergraduates at 20 percent below market,” said Khosla, referring to the kind of offer that’s already in place at UCLA. UCSD currently guarantees only two years of housing and says it tries to keep rents at least 20 percent below market levels.
If the regents grant approval Wednesday, construction could begin on the first phase of the so-called Pepper Canyon East District project as early as 2026. The first 2,000 new beds would be available in 2029. There also are plans for a 300-room hotel.
The plan drew a thumbs up from Kelly Cunningham, an economist at the San Diego Institute for Economic Research.
“Chancellor Khosla’s proposal seems a good idea for attempting to commensurate for San Diego’s unaffordable housing and congestion,” Cunningham said.
“Students compete with other renters in the region and increase traffic. The further from campus they drive for housing adds more traffic congestion. Building housing on or near campus helps address both issues.”
The idea also resonates with many students, including Ivan Ramirez, who served on the Associated Students council last year.
“Student housing is essential for academic success and retention,” said Ramirez. “I look forward to seeing the current construction open and the new construction begin.”
Enrollment has dropped at many universities across the country in recent years, due both to a drop in the number of college-age students and the disruptions of the pandemic.
California’s four-year schools have broadly bucked that trend, partly because more high school students are meeting eligibility requirements, including for the elite University of California system.
UCSD has been at the center of the UC’s growth.
At times, things have turned ugly, particularly in July 2021 when the university abruptly announced that it was far from being able to meet housing demand. Nearly 3,200 students ended up on waiting lists, many of whom didn’t have the means or experience to find off-campus housing nearby. Today, nearly 2,800 students are on the same lists.
Things haven’t been getting easier on the open market.
The average San Diego County rent in early July was $2,460 a month, according to real estate tracker CoStar. The average in the La Jolla and University City area was $810 higher.
The vacancy rate also is a problem. It stood at 4.9 percent recently in that same neighborhood — the sixth lowest figure in the county.
UCSD isn’t keen on asking students to pursue housing off-campus. “To lower costs, students often resort to overcrowded living conditions and/or securing housing a significant distance from campus,” it said in its proposal to regents.
Khosla, an engineer, also prefers to build things himself — and to go large. He added about 3,500 beds for graduate and professional students from 2017 to 2020.
But his new proposal is on an entirely different scale. The only thing that’s come close to it in recent years was a 2021 plan for a 4,500-bed mega dorm at UC Santa Barbara.
The proposal was strongly backed by billionaire Charles Munger, who wanted the university to use blueprints that featured almost no windows. Howls of derision followed, eventually leading UCSB to cancel plans for “dormzilla.”
UCSD’s aesthetic is entirely different. It’s building glassy towers that maximize sunlight and physically create small neighborhoods that are heavy on amenities, like spacious dining halls and fitness areas.
The boom has largely erased the pastoral feel the campus had for decades, making it more of a cityscape.
Some of the school’s neighbors say the towers loom too large, and that growth is creating ever more traffic congestion on the area’s narrow streets. Some students and faculty also dislike it, saying they limit their time on campus due to the difficulty of parking.
Khosla is aware not everyone loves the change.
“The buildings are going to be double-digit stories tall, some taller than others but not all equally,” he said. “It’s not going to look like, how should I say, the development in New York where all the buildings look the same, and have the same height.”
