Student Housing and Dining Services Strategic Plan2021

III. Student Populations Served

The need for housing and the determination to serve student populations at UC Davis is largely impacted by our campus culture and our relationship with the City of Davis. In addition to our desire to provide transition support to all student groups who are newly arriving to the campus, the college town atmosphere of the City of Davis provides safe, good quality housing with desired amenities for student populations who have already established strong connections to the campus. By continuing to administer our annual Davis Apartment Vacancy and Rental Rate Survey, we are able to monitor the availability and affordability of community housing (see Appendix B). We also have strong partnerships with our third party developments (Primero Grove, Russell and LaRue Park, and The Colleges) in providing additional on-campus housing for continuing students. These partnerships will soon include the West Village neighborhood.

First Year Students:

Student Housing remains committed to providing guaranteed housing for first year students. Our current capital plans, in conjunction with campus enrollment planning, confirm our ability to meet this guarantee now and into the future. Our offerings include single, double and triple accommodations which balance students varying needs and desires related to housing. Our major maintenance program is adequately funded and supported to ensure all of our facilities are attractive, safe and secure living environments for our residents.

First Year Transfer Students:

Student Housing has not been able to guarantee housing for first year transfer students since 2002. Although the City of Davis provides a significant number of apartment rental opportunities for transfer students, we are concerned that the lack of on campus housing will become a competitive disadvantage to our recruitment efforts. Beginning 2009 we will be the only UC campus that does not offer a transfer guarantee. We have found that the majority of transfer students prefer apartment living and an optional meal plan when choosing living accommodations. In addition to new construction plans, we are pursuing a partnership within the campus’s West Village neighborhood. This would allow Student Housing the option of guaranteeing a number of units to be occupied by incoming transfer students and to provide the marketing to attract these students during the campus’s spring recruitment period.

Second Year Housing:

The UC Davis cultural trend is for the majority of students to live on campus for one year and then to move off campus for subsequent years. Student Housing, until recently, has been able to provide some amount of housing for students who are interested in returning to the residence halls for a second year. However, for the past three years, based on first year enrollment, we have been unable to offer any spaces to returning residents. We are concerned about the message this sends to families as they make decisions regarding where their students will choose to go to school. In the future, it is our plan to have sufficient housing available so that we can offer spaces for returning residents even if we are fairly confident that only a small number of students will actually choose to remain on campus for a second year. With a planned partnership at West Village for transfer students, our current capital plan has the goal of providing sufficient bed spaces for approximately 10% of our students to return to the residence halls for a second year if they are interested in doing so.

Continuing Students:

As mentioned above, the cultural trend of UC Davis students is to move off campus into apartments in the community, of which there is a large supply. For this reason there has not been the same demand from continuing students to provide on campus housing, and University resources have gone primarily to first year student housing. In the early 1980’s under the leadership of Pat Kearney, UC Davis entered into a ground lease with Tandem Properties, one of the first privatized housing partnerships in the system. Since that time, three more ground leases have been executed, two more with Tandem and one with EAH, Inc. In this privatized housing mix, more than 1200 on-campus apartment units provide over 600 students housing for families, single graduate, and primarily continuing undergraduate students. As these ground leases will continue from 2035 through 2065, we continue to utilize these agreements to provide additional housing to continuing and graduate students. In this mix, there is also a ground lease with Tandem Properties to provide fraternity or living group housing for approximately 180 continuing students. There are four large buildings to house approximately 30 to 35 residents each, and four small houses accommodating 14 residents each. These properties continue to be a challenge, both in terms of finding appropriate registered student organizations to agree to the terms of the lease, as well as managing student conduct. There have been some suggestions by the Office of Resource Management and Planning to possibly enter into a long term lease for office space, but this has been difficult to “pencil out” due to revenue stream necessitated by this ground lease and limited campus resources.

Graduate Students:

Currently, our Orchard and Solano Park Apartments are the only Student Housing operated facilities that are available for graduate students. However, even within these facilities, students with children have priority for lease offerings. Although Russell and LaRue Parks and the Atriums are also available as on campus apartments, there remains a lack of housing for graduate students.

One option to address this situation is the land where Castilian Hall is currently located. It has been determined that this Hall has a poor seismic rating. It has also been determined that the seismic renovations that are needed for this facility are not cost effective. Student Housing’s current plan is to house students in this residence hall through academic year 2010-11; and thereafter to look at opportunities to redevelop the land for new apartments that could serve the graduate student population.

Another option would be to provide specific services to graduate students to ease their transition to the Davis community. The City of Davis is one of the last remaining ‘college towns.’ As noted above, historically the local supply of rental apartments has been sufficient to house continuing and graduate students. The lease process is cyclical, with typical lease commitments lasting 12 months from September 1 through August 31. Demand for off campus housing has resulted in continuing students obtaining and renewing leases as early as March for the new lease year. This makes it difficult for incoming students to find housing since Statement of Intent to Register deadlines can be as late at June 1st. Until 1993, Student Housing provided assistance with off campus housing in its Community Housing office. This service was relocated to Graduate Studies and currently resides within ASUCD. Our goal will be to begin exploring the possibility of integrating services previously provided by the Community Housing office in order to support graduate student housing needs.