Housing is priority for CSUS
Sacramento Bee 4/21/07
When the dust settles, the college will have gone from around 1,100 university-affiliated, residential beds for students to more than 2,000.
"We're doubling our residential program in three years," said Cynthia Cockrill, director of housing and residence life at the university. The new housing will "give students an opportunity to acclimate to the university. They'll find other (students) who are going through the same things."
Most California State University campuses have long been viewed as commuter schools. There's just one occupied bed for every 11 students systemwide, state figures for fall 2005 show. At California State University, Sacramento, the numbers are even higher -- one occupied bed for every 25 students.
"My home is just on the other side of the tracks," said Crystal Fuentez, a journalism freshman who lives with her mother, explaining why she resides off-campus. "I've lived there my whole life."
Also, Sacramento State and a lot of the other CSU colleges are urban schools. That means plenty of private housing options are nearby.
"I just like that I deal one-on-one with a landlord," said John Garlock, a junior majoring in English who lives in midtown. He has a roommate and pays $450 a month in rent -- about $100 less than he would pay monthly living in a residence hall. "It's not that bureaucratic."
But college officials are seeing increasing demand. CSUS' dorms fill up every year, with a waiting list. And a recent study for the university revealed that the college could support 2,600 additional beds.
Plus, officials want to pursue options that include more than just traditional dorm rooms. Only about 200 of the 1,100 students -- mostly freshmen -- living on campus any given year return to university housing the following year, Cockrill said.
That's where two of the new projects come in. The first is a $55 million, four-story housing complex on the northern side of campus that should be ready for students by fall 2009.
The rooms in the building will be laid out as suites, Cockrill said. Some of the suites will have two bedrooms and two baths, occupied by four people. Others would be five-bedroom, two-bath units occupied by five people.
"It's just like an apartment," Cockrill said.
There also will be plenty of retail space in the building. All told, it will house 600 students.
The college will use bond money and student fees to pay for the building. The bonds are set to be approved by the board of trustees next month, Cockrill said.
The new rooms will be more expensive than traditional on-campus housing -- officials haven't yet decided how much they will cost. Rents across the campus also will go up about 10 percent a year through 2009 to pay for the new building, Cockrill said.
Sooner than that, tony offerings will be available a little down the road. University Enterprises, an auxiliary of Sacramento State, has signed a 15-year lease with a private company for an almost-finished, loft-style apartment complex next to the 65th Street light-rail station.
The lofts, which will have about 450 beds, are about the same distance to many campus buildings as on-campus residential housing.
"They are modern apartments -- full kitchen, high-end appliances, granite countertops, balconies, a washer or dryer in each unit," said Matthew Altier, executive director of University Enterprises.
The new lofts will be ready for students this fall. They'll be located behind several live-work units and an 11,000-square-foot chunk of retail space.
"It will be geared toward the older students -- transfer students, international students," Altier said, adding that monthly rent likely will be between $550 and $600 per student.
The university also is developing plans for faculty and staff member housing on a 25-acre site southeast of campus. They've just released a conceptual site plan for the long-discussed project. It will contain up to 450 homes, half of them detached and half of them condos, said Tim Dean, the project's manager. Up to 90 percent will be sold; the rest will be rented.
The intent is to create affordable housing that will attract faculty hesitant about paying Sacramento prices for homes. The homes will be affordable because the land will be owned by the university, but the home will be owned by the buyer -- the homes will be sold, but not the land underneath, bringing the price down.
The university is hoping that many of the new homes will be built and occupied by the end of 2009, Dean said. Officials will soon start looking to partner with a private developer.
The ultimate goal of all the new projects is to attract students and staff members from all over; to make Sacramento State a place where students and instructors from hundreds of miles away think about attending or working.
"If we want to get students from outside the driving area," Altier said, "we have to give them a place to live."