More on UC Overenrollment Wednesday, November 24, 2021
What’s it like to study from a hotel? As UC housing crunch worsens, these students are finding out Ryan Loyola and Sindhu Avanthavel, Updated 11-23-21, CalMatters ==== IN SUMMARY
At least four UC campuses have resorted to hotels to house students this fall. The option provided temporary relief to hundreds of students. But the financial support campuses offered varied. And for many students, finding more permanent, affordable housing remains elusive, even as the end of fall quarter nears. ==== Zarai Saldana expected to kick off her senior year at UC Merced from a brand-new apartment where she’d already signed a lease. Instead, the transfer student spent the first two weeks of the school year shuttling from hotel to hotel. Construction delays had held up the opening of Merced Station, the private student apartment complex where she’d planned to live, leaving more than 500 of UC Merced’s 9,000-plus students without housing. In hotel rooms paid for by the university, Saldana and her roommate took turns studying or eating on the one desk. With no kitchen, she couldn’t prepare food. And because the hotels had to make room for non-student guests who already had reservations, she said, the university assigned her to three different hotels in a span of 11 days. The constant moving affected her studies. “I didn’t start off as well as I hoped I would,” she said. “I started falling behind.” Saldana eventually found a room to rent off campus. But her experience reflects that of UCLA Faculty Association Blog: 4th Quarter 2021
173
