Shelter Now In Season: With Rental Prices On The Decline, Things Are Looking Up For Students
Amber Parry, Daily Californian, 9/1/2004
It seems as if the days of UC Berkeley students sleeping on benches at the BART station or living in their friends' dorm closets are over. With Berkeley's rental market softening, UC Berkeley students are finding more and more vacancies this fall--making the yearly scramble for thousands of housing units easier. Because of a housing shortage during a booming Bay Area economy that peaked in 2000 and allowed landlords to raise rents to an all-time high, students saw a barren waste land when they scoped out the city for housing. There were few affordable housing options and the university did not guarantee housing past their first years. But in the last three years, rental prices have slowly dropped--a relief to the many cash-strapped college students seeking housing close to campus. Vacancy rates in Berkeley, which have historically hovered at 1 percent or lower, have risen 3 to 5 percentage points this year, says Jay Kelekian, executive director of Berkeley's rent stabilization board. Kelekian points to the bursting of the economic bubble as a possible explanation for the increase in vacancies. People who could afford to live in Berkeley during the height of the dot-com boom can no longer afford to live here, he says. The housing crisis in Berkeley began when the state legislature passed the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act in 1995, giving landlords the right to increase the rent on vacant units to match current market values. The act went into full effect Jan. 1, 1999 and within three months, median rents had increased by more than 40 percentage points, according to the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board. Prices continued to rise, peaking in the second quarter of 2001. At the height of the crisis, the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment was $1,200 per month, according to board data. But rental prices have taken a downward turn this summer, with the median rent for a newly leased one-bedroom apartment holding steady at $1,100 by June. The plunge in rental prices signals a stabilization of the rental market for new tenants, Kelekian says. The stabilization of the rental market does not mean the crisis is over, says Steve Barton, housing director for the city of Berkeley. Rents are still among the highest of any metropolitan area in the country, Barton says. When the university empties thousands of students on the streets of Berkeley, some students travel as far as Oakland or San Francisco to dodge the high rental prices. "There is this underlying crisis that is not going to go away for a long time, even though rents have stopped going up for the moment," Barton says. Many people define the housing crisis incorrectly--as the presence of vacancies rather than the presence of affordable housing, says Howard Chong, a UC Berkeley graduate student and member of the Rent Stabilization Board. "Rents have gone up overall in the past five years, and that makes a lot of vacancies, but it doesn't help students who are on a fixed budget," Chong says. To help curtail the problem, UC Berkeley is offering a number of new housing options over the next year. Campus officials hope to guarantee two years of housing for students. This fall, campus officials will determine when they can offer two years of housing, says Nancy Jurich, director of administrative and business services with housing and dining. Currently, UC Berkeley guarantees housing to freshmen and transfer students. Other UCs, like UCLA, offer two years of guaranteed housing, and Stanford University offers housing for all undergraduates. The new Channing-Bowditch Apartments, which opened Aug. 1, provide 57 units with 228 beds for juniors, seniors and transfer students. Unit 2 in-fill housing--built between the existing residence halls--is slated to open in January, and will feature apartments and suites targeted at spring transfer students and continuing students, Jurich says. And spring admit freshmen can look forward to Unit 2's new residence hall suites, which offer 216 spaces, Jurich says. The university will also open Unit 1 in-fill housing next August. The efforts to provide more university housing could reduce the stress of scrambling for housing. UC Berkeley senior Anne Sufka has felt the pinch in the housing search. Last year, Sufka shared a two-bedroom apartment with one roommate in downtown Berkeley's Gaia Building, paying close to $2,000 a month. The Gaia Building's convenient location, security--including a locked and gated entry armed with security cameras--and other amenities, including a T1 Internet line, justified the high rent, Sufka says. As a spring admit her freshman year, Sufka struggled to find housing. Since the university did not guarantee housing, she lived in a boarding house. Her second year, Sufka lived in the dorms to avoid the housing search. But when she began her search again her third year, the rental market had improved drastically, she says. "I feel like there are quite a few apartments available--and they are definitely affordable," says Sufka, who now lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Berkeley's Fine Arts Building in Downtown. Becky White, assistant director at Cal Rentals, the online apartment database, echoes Sufka's statements. She says there are a swath of reasonably priced rentals on the market. "I would encourage students to negotiate if they think the rent is too high," White says. "Landlords not offering reasonable rents are going to find in September that having vacancies isn't too nice."
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