The Brief

Dorm life at Sacramento State University suited Sofia Gonzalez. Living on campus her first year, most classes were a 10-minute walk away. Most of her closest friends lived in the same residence hall. “Everything,” she said, was “right there.”

But this summer, as she prepared to start her sophomore year, friends who applied for university housing warned Gonzalez they had been placed on a wait list. Daunted by the limited supply of upperclassmen dorms — and most of all, the cost of on-campus rent — Gonzalez opted to try the private market instead. “There was nowhere I could live in my price range near campus,” said Gonzalez, a business and marketing major. She contemplated transferring to a community college or commuting two hours each way from her parents’ Bay Area home to Sacramento.

Housing can be a major barrier for low-income students like Gonzalez around the California State University system, which includes Sacramento State and 22 other campuses. Recent estimates have found that housing accounts for half the cost of attendance at CSU, and that 11% of CSU students surveyed experience homelessness or housing insecurity. 

That reality is one reason why CSU added more than 17,000 new beds between 2014 and 2024. About 5,600 more are either under construction or approved to be built. The investments in housing are giving CSU a more residential flavor, even as many campuses maintain their long-standing dependence on commuters.

Now the question is whether CSU should build even more housing, especially in hot real estate markets where students struggle to find off-campus alternatives. A systemwide housing plan issued by CSU in July sketches potential projects that could house an additional 12,600 students as soon as 2030.

CSU officials say on-campus housing improves students’ graduation rates and could ease housing pressures for Cal State’s 460,000 students, 87% of whom still live off campus with their families or otherwise. Future housing development could be uneven based on current enrollment trends across the system, which have left empty dorms at a handful of Cal State campuses, while others rework double-occupancy rooms into triples to meet growing demand.

At the same time, state lawmakers are weighing a potentially hefty 2026 bond measure for student housing and other educational facilities at CSU, the University of California and the California Community Colleges system. Supporters say the measure, which has yet to determine a dollar amount, could help make college more affordable for low-income students.

“To make sure students are successful in their learning, they’ve got to be able to have stable housing,” Assemblymember David Alvarez, D-San Diego, who introduced the legislation, said at a hearing on Assembly Bill 48.

At Cal State Northridge, which plans to open a new 198-bed housing complex this fall, 2,000 students were on a waiting list for housing in fall 2024, CSU data show. Kevin Conn, the university’s executive director of student housing and residential life, said his colleagues field regular calls from students desperate for student housing. “Their stories are really, really heart-wrenching, because we can only do so much,” he said. “We can’t just put them in; there’s no spot to put them.”

Sacramento State has faced a similar conundrum. Last fall, there were more than 4,400 students who requested to live in campus housing, but fewer than 3,300 beds were available. The campus plans to house hundreds of additional students in the coming years.

In the meantime, Gonzalez’s frantic housing search ended off campus. She found a room 30 minutes from campus for $800 a month — within her budget, but expensive enough that she will likely need a second job to afford rent and groceries. “It’s going to be hard this next year to manage my money,” she said.

A push into housing at CSU

California State University has a long history of serving predominantly commuter students, though the university system has made major investments in student housing over the past two decades. Federal data show CSU has almost doubled its capacity to house students since 2004.

CSU’s housing program nonetheless continues to trail the University of California system, which today houses 40% of students. That’s more than 120,000 students in UC housing compared to roughly 60,000 across CSU. A majority of students in both systems live off campus.

CSU argues that adding more university housing will boost students’ academic performance. Officials point to evidence from San Diego State University, which found students living on campus had higher graduation rates and grade point averages as well as lower rates of academic probation compared to their off-campus peers. Researchers have documented similar positive effects in other states, too.

San José State University’s Spartan Village on the Paseo converted an existing hotel into student housing. Credit: San José State University/Robert Bain

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San José State University

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Another concern is cost. University officials said they strive to keep student housing affordable relative to peer institutions and nearby market-rate units.

In 2024, the CSU-wide average rate for a two-person unit in a residence hall was $9,668 over an academic year. Cal Poly Humboldt hosted the cheapest doubles, charging $6,624 on average, while San Diego State’s $14,344 average was the system’s most expensive.

If lawmakers and then voters approve a bond measure, housing projects would likely compete with the university system’s substantial deferred maintenance needs. The potential construction boom could also be dampened by a dreary economic outlook for CSU, which faces a $2.3 billion budget gap.

Such financial constraints are top of mind for Kamran Garcia Hosseinzadeh, a recent graduate and resident assistant of Cal State Dominguez Hills. CSUDH plans to add hundreds of additional beds to campus by 2026, but Garcia Hosseinzadeh is skeptical that the university has the capacity and the funding to operate expanded housing. “I definitely don’t feel confident with the future of housing here,” they said.

Declining enrollment at some CSU campuses adds to the financial uncertainty. Systemwide, 92% of student housing is filled, but at shrinking campuses like Sonoma State University and CSU East Bay, where only 64% and 58% of housing, respectively, was occupied in fall 2024.

Another Cal State campus has struggled to recover from a pandemic-era downturn in housing occupancy. Auditors reported that years of operating losses in Cal State L.A.’s housing program are depleting its reserves. Occupancy has dropped to as low as 60% in recent years, auditors said, and student housing required “unanticipated emergency repairs.” Responding to the audit, Cal State L.A.’s director of housing wrote that the university had taken “sweeping corrective measures” to improve campus housing.

University officials at other Cal State campuses said they’re confident there is room to grow on their campuses, despite warnings of an impending decline in traditional college-aged students. Even if student headcount plateaus, they said, housing wait lists and other metrics suggest untapped potential to bring students who are forced to search for off-campus housing into on-campus dorms.

An experiment in San Luis Obispo

With almost 9,000 on-campus beds, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is the housing heavyweight of the Cal State system. A large majority of the university’s students are from outside county lines, so many of the roughly 14,000 students living off campus spill into residential neighborhoods, where their sheer numbers threaten to drive already expensive rents even higher.

The housing market near the Central Coast campus is so pricey — average rent is 31% higher than the national average, according to Zillow Rentals data — students on a budget sometimes lease less-than-ideal accommodations.

Jordan Schleifer, a recent graduate who led several housing-related initiatives while vice president of Cal Poly Democrats, said many such dwellings lack basic safety fixtures like fire escapes or working smoke detectors. “It creates a situation where students are living in unsafe conditions and they can’t be fixed because they don’t want to lose the housing,” Schleifer said.

And enrollment-wise, San Luis Obispo’s master plan projects that the student headcount will increase from 22,400 in fall 2024 to 25,000 by 2035.

A rendering of a modular student housing project planned for Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

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Financial limitations have forced San Luis Obispo’s leaders to get creative. Eager to save on construction costs — and to avoid passing those costs onto students — the university has converted some double-occupancy dorms into triples.

But the university’s most ambitious experiment is just starting. Next fall, the university will install the first in a series of modular, factory-built housing units, aiming to add as many as 4,000 beds over several years. Housing modules will get trucked to campus and then “stacked on top of each other like Legos,” said Mike McCormick, the university’s vice president of facilities management and development.

The hope is that as the factory starts producing modules at scale, the cost to produce each one will drop below traditional on-site construction. “We’re a long way from having this be a really efficient process yet, but you have to start somewhere,” McCormick said.

Lawmakers weigh student housing policy

Reports of college students living in their cars and surveys revealing the scale of student homelessness have prompted state lawmakers to take a more aggressive approach to student housing in recent years.

Typically, CSU finances housing by issuing bonds. But California lawmakers took a more active role in 2021 when they established a $2.2 billion grant program to help fund housing across CSU, UC and community colleges.

A dozen projects at CSU have been named grant recipients to date. Altogether, the projects are expected to add 5,000 beds to campuses from Cal Poly Humboldt to San Diego State. The grants provided about $660 million, which was nearly half the cost of 12 CSU projects, while the system provided the rest.

Some of that housing is now open to students. That includes a 729-bed project at San Francisco State University and San José State University’s Spartan Village on the Paseo, which converted an existing hotel into student housing.

Students move into San Francisco State’s new West Grove Commons residence hall.

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Now that the state grant funding has been awarded, advocates, including the Student Homes Coalition, have turned their attention to a bill aimed at spurring more off-campus housing by creating “campus development zones,” where the review process for housing development projects would be streamlined.

The other option, the state facilities bond AB 48, passed the Assembly and is currently in the Senate. Details, including a dollar figure, would be finalized in spring 2026 in hopes of putting the bond on the November ballot.

“The decision to send someone to college or not can literally depend on whether there’s affordable housing for them in those communities,” Alvarez said. “And so we want to make sure that there is something there, throughout our state, for families who want to send their kids to college.”

At 5 a.m. California time, when it is still dark outside, a member of the state's Department of Public Health gets on a weekly call.

The topic? Health emergencies all over the world.

For years, the U.S. federal government participated in these calls, which are organized by the World Health Organization. Now, as the Trump administration says it has withdrawn from WHO over its handling of COVID, among other things, California is stepping in.

It is the first state to join WHO's Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network, also known as GOARN. Dr. Erica Pan, director of the California Department of Public Health, says she's been in touch with other states hoping to follow suit. Illinois, in a press release, said it's "making preparations" to join.

"The Trump administration's withdrawal from WHO is a reckless decision that will hurt all Californians and Americans," said California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a statement. "California will not bear witness to the chaos this decision will bring."

This move by states to take things into their own hands is part of a broader trend, according to Dr. Gavin Yamey, a professor of global health and public policy at Duke University.

"I think this is a very smart and savvy play," says Yamey. "The federal government has reneged on its public health protection responsibilities, and you're seeing states taking steps so they still are part of the international response to outbreaks and emerging threats."

Not quite a member but still a participant

That doesn't mean California, for example, could become a full-fledged WHO member. Many forums and meetings hosted by WHO are limited to member states — meaning national governments. But some parts of WHO, like GOARN, are open to a broader array of groups, including nonprofit and multinational organizations, academic centers and different levels of governments. Like American states. 

GOARN is made up of over 350 such groups that work together to detect and respond to infectious disease outbreaks and public health emergencies. The network was created in 2000 after leaders realized that a lack of coordination was hindering outbreak response. Since its creation, GOARN has helped organize, analyze and respond to emergencies like SARS, Ebola and mpox.

Members of GOARN participate in weekly calls, get regular outbreak updates and also get access to WHO Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources platform, which "is continuously scanning global open sources for signals of outbreaks and health events," says Pan. "We're just now getting training and onboarding."

Pan says participating in the network and platform brings better awareness of global health threats — and lets the state respond accordingly. "[It] helps us anticipate threats earlier," says Pan, noting a drop-off in federal health guidance, including the lack of a national flu vaccination campaign this flu season.

Indeed, the U.S. federal government has said it does not plan to continue participating in groups like GOARN. In a statement sent to NPR earlier this month, the U.S. State Department wrote: "The United States will not be participating in regular WHO-led or managed events."

"Charting its own course"

Instead, the U.S. is taking a different approach, pursuing health and aid agreements directly with individual countries. These agreements often include sharing disease outbreak information.

"The United States is charting its own course on global health engagement, grounded in accountability, transparency, and the expertise of America's public health institutions," said a statement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to NPR. "States do not set U.S. foreign policy."

Not everyone agrees with this stance.

Some conservative voices have urged the U.S. to continue participating in certain WHO forums, particularly those that provide information, data and assessments for emerging infectious disease outbreaks. For example, Brett Schaefer — a senior fellow at the right-leaning thinktank the American Enterprise Institute — said, even as the U.S. withdraws from WHO, the U.S. should continue to participate in initiatives like the Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources platform "to make sure that you have full, robust access to the information."

This type of international platform would be "a very difficult thing for the U.S. to replicate or to try and build outside of the World Health Organization — also [it'd be] somewhat inefficient," says Schaefer.

However, he said over email that the jury is still out on California's decision to join GOARN. "It's interesting but unclear at this point," he wrote, noting that WHO has not clarified California's status. He added: "It also could just be a PR stunt by Newsom."

WHO did not respond to NPR's requests for comment on California's participation in GOARN or any other parts of WHO as well as on other states that have reached out to join.

This new model does have a potential downside — a split between states that join part of WHO and states that don't, says Yamey: "You could end up having this awful, tragic divide" where some state leaders have access to better, more up-to-date outbreak information for making public health decisions than leaders in other states, he says.

Pan says California is hoping to partner with other states that don't join GOARN. "Our intent is really to — acknowledging that we are the biggest state with the largest state health department — step up and provide some leadership."
Copyright 2026 NPR

A five-day fan festival will take over the L.A. Memorial Coliseum in June to welcome the World Cup to Los Angeles.

The festival will kick off the same day as the tournament, June 11, and run through June 15. It will include live broadcasts of the games, music and food, and provide a place for fans to celebrate as Team USA plays its first game against Paraguay at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on June 12.

"For the first five days of the World Cup, the fan festival will be the heart of the World Cup experience for many people in L.A.," said Kathryn Schloessman, the CEO of the L.A. World Cup 2026 Host Committee.

Angelenos will need to purchase tickets for the fan festival, but prices and details will be announced in March, according to Schloessman.

The Los Angeles host committee for the 2026 World Cup announced the details of programming for fans across the city on Wednesday. They include nine "fan zones" that will pop up across the L.A. area throughout the World Cup's 39 days of soccer matches.

Here are where the zones are located:

• The Original Farmers Market from June 18-21 
• City of Downey on June 20
• Union Station and the Plaza de Cultura y Artes from June 25-28
• Hansen Dam Lake from July 2-5
• Earvin "Magic" Johnson Park from July 4-5
• Whittier Narrows from July 9-11
• Venice Beach on July 11
• Fairplex from July 14-15 and July 18-19
• West Harbor from July 14-15 and July 18-19

LAist has a fan guide for the 2026 World Cup.

California Democratic senators advanced a measure Tuesday that would make it easier for people to sue federal agents over civil rights violations, a bill shaped by fears of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement practices.

The bill from Sens. Scott Wiener and Aisha Wahab, both Bay Area Democrats, took on additional significance after federal agents gunned down Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen and ICU nurse, in Minnesota last weekend. Senators discussed the measure on the floor for more than 90 minutes before voting along party lines, 30 to 10, to send it to the Assembly.

“It’s a sad statement on where we are in this country that this has to be a partisan issue,” Wiener said just before the vote on his bill, which is also known as the “No Kings Act”. “Red, blue, everyone has constitutional rights. And everyone should have the ability to hold people accountable when they violate those rights.”

It’s among several bills lawmakers are moving forward in the new year to confront an escalation of aggressive immigration enforcement tactics and to protect immigrant communities. They include bills that would tax for-profit detention companies, prohibit law enforcement officers from moonlighting as federal agents and attempt to curb courthouse arrests.

Those efforts follow a slate of legislation signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year to resist the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign in California, including a first-in-the nation measure to prohibit officers from wearing masks and others that limit their access to schools and hospitals.

While some of those laws are facing legal challenges, the new batch of proposals offer “practical solutions that are squarely within the state’s control,” said Shiu-Ming Cheer, deputy director at California Immigrant Policy Center.

Here’s a look at some of the key bills lawmakers are considering:

No moonlighting as a federal agent

Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, a Democrat from Culver City, authored a bill that would prohibit law enforcement from taking a side job as a federal immigration agent.

At a press conference in San Francisco earlier this month, Bryan said the measure is especially timely as the federal administration ramps up its recruitment of California’s local law enforcement.

“We don’t collaborate in the kidnapping of our own community members, but there is a loophole in state law,” he said. “While you can’t collaborate with ICE while you are working in your police shift, you can take a second job with the Department of Homeland Security. And I don’t think that that is right.”

In an interview with CalMatters, he said the legislation is intended to bring transparency and accountability, and to close that loophole.

“The federal administration has created not just a secret police but a secret military at the expense of health care, social safety nets, and key benefits that the American people need and rely on to make it through the day,” said Bryan. “All of those resources have been rerouted to the unaccounted militarized force patrolling our streets and literally killing American citizens.”

Keep ICE awy from courthouses

Sen. Eloise Gómez Reyes, a Democrat from San Bernardino, introduced legislation to prevent federal immigration agents from making “unannounced and indiscriminate” arrests in courthouses.

“The issue is clear cut,” said Gómez Reyes in a statement. “One of the core responsibilities of government is to protect people — not to inflict terror on them. California is not going to let the federal government make political targets out of people trying to be good stewards of the law. Discouraging people from coming to court makes our community less safe.”

The legislation was introduced nearly two weeks after a federal judge ordered that the U.S. Justice Department halt civil arrests in immigration courts across Northern California, ruling that its deportation policies hadn’t addressed the “chilling effects, safety risks, and impacts on hearing attendance.”

Efforts to bolster protections in California courthouses have also been championed by Sen. Susan Rubio, a Democrat from West Covina, who introduced a bill that would allow remote courthouse appearances for the majority of civil or criminal state court hearings, trials or conferences until January 2029.

Taxing detention centers

Assemblymember Matt Haney, a Democrat from San Francisco, introduced a bill that would place a 50% tax on profits from immigration detention centers. Over 5,700 people are being held in seven immigration detention centers across California, three of which are located in Kern County.

Escalating 'resistance'

Cheer, of California Immigrant Policy Center, said the early introduction of the bills demonstrates more urgency from the state Legislature to tackle issues around immigration enforcement.

“My hope for this year is that the state can be as bold and innovative as possible seeing the crisis communities are facing from immigration enforcement,” she said.

That means ensuring funding for attorneys to represent people facing deportation, addressing existing gaps in state laws around information sharing with the federal government, and looking into companies that are directly profiting from the business of arresting and deporting people, Cheer said.

Republicans have criticized the measures, which they characterize as overstepping on federal priorities.

"No one likes to see what’s happening in Minnesota. No one wants to see that coming to California," said Sen. Tony Strickland, a Republican representing Huntington Beach. Instead, he argued, cities and states should jettison their so-called "sanctuary" policies that hamper coordination between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.

He also criticized Democrats for taking precious Senate time to prepare for hypothetical scenarios rather than addressing existing problems in California.

“At the end of the day, we have a lot of serious issues here in California, and we need to start focusing on California-specific issues.”

Kevin Johnson, an immigration law professor and former dean of the UC Davis School of Law, said state and local governments are trying to figure out how far to go in resisting federal immigration enforcement given Trump’s threats to pull funding from sanctuary jurisdictions.

“While there’s concern and fear in immigrant communities, there’s some solace being given by the support expressed by state and local officials,” he said. “As the Trump administration escalates its aggressive deportation tactics across the nation, California has escalated its resistance.”

CalMatters reporter Wendy Fry contributed to this story.

Cayla Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

President Donald Trump has reshuffled the leadership of his immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota in the face of wide-spread anger over two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens by federal agents. Operation commander Gregory Bovino is out, and Trump is sending Border Czar Tom Homan to take over.

But it's not clear changes at the top can solve a more basic problem: the immigration agents flooding the Twin Cities are generally less experienced in urban policing and crowd control than other police.

"The skills that these federal immigration agents are bringing to these cities are a complete mismatch for what we actually need," says Irene Vega, an associate professor of sociology at UC Irvine. "That's not what their job has been, historically, and I just think it's a very dangerous situation."

Vega studied the attitudes of Customs and Border Protection officers regarding use of force, a project that involved interviewing more than 90 officers. The CBP appears to make up the largest contingent of the roughly 3,000 agents deployed to Minnesota.

"They saw themselves as very different," she says. "They would tell me that they were trained to hike in the desert. They often told me about arresting 10, 15 people who were very compliant."

She says the isolation of the border region influenced the officers' calculus about use of force. She recalls one officer who explained that in the desert, he doesn't have the option to duck into an alley for cover.

"And so he said, 'I'm going to have to do what I have to do,'" Vega says.

Over the years, CBP has come under pressure to rein in its officers' use of deadly force along the border. Incidents of officers shooting at people for throwing rocks came under special scrutiny, and an external review in 2013.

"Too many cases do not appear to meet the test of objective reasonableness with regard to the use of deadly force," the report found. "[I]n some cases agents put themselves in harm's way by remaining in close proximity to the rock throwers when moving out of range was a reasonable option."

The report recommended equipping CBP officers with less-lethal weapons such as pepper spray, a requirement that was added to the agency's handbook in 2014.

Now, in Minneapolis, CBP has come to rely heavily on sprays and other chemical irritants to push back protesters and observers. In some cases, such as the moments leading up to the fatal shooting on Saturday of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, the use of pepper spray appeared to inflame confrontations.

"There's a duty of obligation that you have in policing, if you incapacitate someone," says Leon Taylor. He's a retired Baltimore police officer, who also served as a military peace keeper in the Balkans He and other former police have been discussing the scenes coming out of Minnesota.

"If [a pepper-sprayed person] stumbles out into traffic and gets run over and killed, that's on me. There's a duty of care."

He says the videos appear to show federal officers escalating conflicts, instead of defusing them.

"They live in a toxic environment of their own creation that has nothing to do with policing," Taylor says, and he blames the message from high-level officials – such as Vice President Vance – that they have "immunity."

"If they told these guys instead, before they turned them loose, that you have an absolute responsibility, instead of absolute immunity… it starts with the mindset about what you are doing," he says.

David "Kawika" Lau was a senior instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, which trains CBP and other federal agents. He says in the years after the external report on CBP use of force there was an increased emphasis on teaching de-escalation techniques – training he helped to shape.

"We teach them emotional intelligence, self-regulation, self-awareness. Because you can't bring calm to any situation if you yourself are not calm," Lau says.

But he cautions that those techniques are meant to defuse one-on-one confrontations. He's not sure how well CBP is prepared for the raucous crowds in the Twin Cities.

"They may have some training and expertise in urban operations," Lau says. "But that is not what that position [CBP officer] was designed to do. Therefore, that's not what the training is designed to produce."

Federal immigration agencies say they're being forced into an unfamiliar role. CBP commissioner Rodney Scott told Fox News over the weekend, "The primary training was to go out and arrest suspects, which is already dangerous. This entire environment, where the community is encouraged by local leaders to come out and actually prevent you from making a felony arrest, it's a new dynamic. We're trying to evolve to it."

Minnesota leaders have largely encouraged protesters to be peaceful; they have not explicitly called for people to prevent immigration arrests.

But federal officials say that's still the effect, as protesters tail immigration agents and try to warn people at risk of arrest. And these officers may now be more inclined to respond to such protesters as law-breakers: A recent Attorney General memo on "domestic terrorism" lists potential charges, including "impeding" federal officers, and "seditious conspiracy to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States."

Minnesota officials say the feds' approach to urban law enforcement has distracted them from their immigration enforcement mission. On Sunday, Governor Tim Walz said federal agents had neglected to take into custody a non-citizen with a serious criminal record as he was released from a jail outside the metro area.

"They're too busy up here, doing what they did yesterday [the Pretti shooting] to go pick up someone who actually should be removed from this country," he said.

"It's their job to do immigration and customs enforcement. It's law enforcement's job to do law enforcement in Minnesota," Walz said. 

On Monday, as the political backlash against the federal presence in Minnesota grew, Walz had what he called a "productive call" with President Trump. He said the president told him he would consider reducing the number of federal officers in Minnesota.
Copyright 2026 NPR