The High Cost of Living (Indoors)

In case you missed the recent LA Times report below (and are looking for something else to worry about), here are some excerpts:

The plight... foreign graduate students adds another layer of woes to California’s housing affordability crisis, which has led to the nation’s highest homeless population and burdened millions of tenants with high rents. Foreign students’ difficulties in living in California have broad implications, not only for those who may be hoping to remain here after their degree but the nation’s economic competitiveness as well...

For graduate students, the housing squeeze remains considerable. Last fall, the union representing graduate student instructors and teaching assistants within the University of California system surveyed its 19,000 members on how much they were paying for housing. The survey found that on average union members paid more than half their monthly income on rent. Overall, 9 in 10 respondents were rent burdened, meeting the federal definition of paying more than 30% of their income on housing costs...

Problems with affording a place to live can be especially hard for foreigners, who make up nearly half the members in the UC academic student employee union. In addition to the low pay and high living costs, they have to navigate an unfamiliar housing market while lacking access to credentials often necessary to secure an apartment...

Giovanni Peri, an economist and expert in international migration at UC Davis, estimated in a study that looked at foreign-born science, technology, engineering and math workers that roughly half a percentage point of the country’s annual economic growth is attributable to contributions from highly educated immigrants. Of those, about half first arrived in the country as students.

“This group is very vulnerable to costs in their first years, but they will be a huge contributor to economic development in future years,” Peri said. Peri, who was born in Italy, came to the U.S. as a graduate student at UC Berkeley two decades ago. He found a small rent-controlled apartment near campus that he shared with other students and scraped by. But, he said, if housing prices had been 20% higher when he was looking where to study, then he likely would have gone somewhere else, a decision he expected many would make as costs rise...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2022-06-10/foreign-graduate-students-cant-afford-l-a-housing.