UCSC faculty housing breaks ground
Santa Cruz Sentinel 3/7/07
The first phase of the 84-unit development off Empire Grade Road, dubbed Ranch View Terrace, calls for 45 three- and four-bedroom below-market homes by fall 2008 and aims to help ease housing costs for professors and staff.
UCSC acting Chancellor George Blumenthal said the project, in the works since the early '90s, "is responsive to community requests that we develop more housing on campus" and will be key to recruiting and retaining faculty and staff.
But with cost overruns, project delays and the development's size reduced, many faculty members are wondering whether getting a home here remains a financial reality. Prices for homes are as high as $655,000 — up from earlier estimates of $300,000 to $400,000 and beyond the means of some entry-level faculty who make $55,000 per year.
Literature professor Margo Hendricks, 59, said her $69,900 annual salary may not be enough to buy in. Even when coupled with her husband's salary, they would be spending about half their total income on the mortgage and she has not ruled out leaving Santa Cruz for a teaching position elsewhere.
"We're not sure if we're going to buy," said Hendricks, who since 1998 has been on a housing wait list. "My husband's heart almost stopped when I told him what the monthly payments would be — $3,053 a month.
Some on the project's wait list have relinquished their place due to the price increases.
But campus housing officials said the demand has been holding firm with roughly 100 faculty and 100 staff on the list.
Starting at $479,000 for a 1,750-square-foot unit, prices still fall well below the median home price of $710,000 in Santa Cruz.
A shift of some on-campus homeowners to Ranch View Terrace would also create vacancies in other campus housing, said UCSC housing manager Steve Houser.
New campus housing is crucial for environmental studies professor Daniel Press, who has a second child on the way and is hoping to scale up from his current 2.5 bedroom campus home. But Press said two things have made it impossible to afford off-campus housing: salaries at UC have lagged 10 to 20 percent behind comparable institutions elsewhere all while the housing market has soared.
No new housing has been built on campus for faculty or staff since 1992. Since then, enrollment has grown from 10,000 to 15,000 students; the number of faculty and staff has grown from 2,800 to more than 4,500; and median home prices in Santa Cruz County have skyrocketed from $225,000 to above $700,000.
Good faculty candidates are walking away from UCSC job offers, saying they don't want to give up their quality of life to advance their careers.
Work on Ranch View, located near the base of campus, has been pushed back several times, most recently by last-minute contract negotiations between the university, the developer and lenders.
Construction costs have also increased significantly in recent years.
The project was downsized from 125 to 84 units, then divided into phases.
Other difficulties over the past three years involved resolving issues of protected habitat with federal wildlife officials and by a lawsuit from neighbors.
UCSC is the second largest provider of below-market housing in the 10-campus UC system, Houser said. Only UC Irvine provides more.
If the first round of units sell quickly, the university will begin planning for the next 29 units in late spring.