More from the Regents

More bits and pieces from last week's Regents meeting, this time from the San Francisco Business Journal. The project described is to be located near the People's Park proposed project, but should not be confused with it:

The University of California Board of Regents approved more than $7 million in predevelopment funding Thursday for the latest student housing project to enter UC Berkeley’s pipeline, a development that would add 1,400 beds to the university’s thinly stretched portfolio. The funding will go toward site surveys, design and other preliminary work for a proposed 1,400-bed project at 2200 Bancroft Way, a 0.8-acre, Regents-owned site across the street from the southern edge of UC Berkeley’s campus. UC Berkeley expects to return to the Regents in the fall of next year to request approval for a full budget for the project, which, pending various approvals, could begin construction in the fall of 2025 and open by fall of 2028.

The additional 1,400 beds would join the university’s existing 3,500-bed student housing pipeline, per a report provided to the Regents’ Finance and Capital Strategies Committee. For decades, growth of UC Berkeley’s enrollment outstripped the pace at which the university added new housing, and today it can house just 21% of its 45,000-person enrollment, the lowest proportion of any campus within the UC system. 

The dynamic has created what observers describe as a housing crisis within a housing crisis, wherein UC Berkeley students must scramble to find student-appropriate housing in Berkeley, a city already struggling with its own broader shortage of homes. Rents for student-aimed units in Berkeley have soared, with some three-bedroom apartments, for example, renting in 2022 for as much as $9,150 a month.

The 1,400 beds proposed at 2200 Bancroft could also allow for the university to make repairs to aging housing stock, work that could require some student housing to shutter during the academic year. The project could provide “future surge space required to move student beds from facilities undergoing renovation or redevelopment” should the university choose to pursue that work, the report said...

Full story at https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2023/09/22/uc-berkeley-2200-bancroft-student-housing.html.