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May 4, 1998
Wanted for rent: a private room and bath with continental breakfast, a weekly cleaning service, and cable television--all at a very affordable price.
Sound like an impossible dream in Santa Cruz's competitive rental market? Not for 38 UC Santa Cruz students. These students, participants in the university's Housing Partnership Program, found lodging at the Beachview Inn and the Carousel Motel from mid-September through March this year.
"The program benefits both the students--who find a home and gain a reference for a future housing search--and the participating hotels and motels, which have an opportunity to increase their income during the off-season," said Wanda Amos, who coordinates the program through the campus's Community Rentals Office.
Lisa Morley, operations manager for the Carousel Motel, agrees. "The students gave the property an appearance of being alive, which makes it more appealing to the individual traveler," she said. "Having occupied rooms and guaranteed income during the winter was a real plus."
Carousel housed 20 students this year and plans to participate in the program again next year, Morley said.
During the Housing Partnership Program's pilot run this year, students paid approximately $500 a month for a single room and $600 for a double room in one of the participating hotels. In addition to the breakfast and cleaning, cable, and local telephone services, the students were provided with an in-room microwave and small refrigerator. Rents for a studio apartment usually range between $370 to $700 in Santa Cruz, often not including utilities.
"It's clean, comfortable, peaceful, and the rent is fantastic," said a UCSC senior in psychology who found a home at the Beachview Inn. "In fact, it's the best place I've ever lived in Santa Cruz."
The student, who requested that his name not be used, liked the situation so much that he has arranged with Beachview managers to stay until the end of the school year.
Students in the partnership program rent from the participating hotels and motels on a month-to-month basis, and the establishments may screen them before accepting or rejecting them as tenants.
UCSC wants to house more students through the program next year and has already signed up 10 hotels and motels to participate, including the two that helped pilot the program.
The university houses the highest percentage of its students on campus of any of the UC campuses; nearly 4,500 of UCSC's 10,600 students live in campus residence halls and apartments. But a shortage of available rentals in Santa Cruz and an increase in enrollments at UCSC have made the search for housing tougher than ever.
Hotels and motels that sign up for the Housing Partnership Program will receive a number of benefits, Amos said. These include referrals to parents and other campus visitors, a "Slug partnership" decal to display at the motel, and planned Web-page links from UCSC's Housing, Dining, and Child Care Services home page. Partnership listings will be posted exclusively for students at the Community Rentals Office, where students go to find local rental listings.
In addition to launching the Housing Partnership Program, UCSC created additional housing for its students this past fall in a number of ways. The university added nearly 400 new "bed spaces" on campus by rearranging existing living spaces and creating a modular housing neighborhood that is dubbed "The Village." It also suspended a $15 fee landlords and property managers pay to post their rentals at the Community Rentals Office.
The campus is starting construction this summer on the College Nine Apartments, which will be located north of the Colleges Nine and Ten Academic Buildings. The apartments will house 270 undergraduate students when completed in fall 1999.