LACCD Plans To Build Campus Housing. It'll Take Years, Leaving Students Wondering About The Present

The Los Angeles Community College District hosted a series of town halls this month to discuss building student housing on three campuses in the district — L.A. City College in East Hollywood, Pierce in Woodland Hills, and West L.A. in Culver City.

Community college students today won’t likely benefit from the proposed housing. According to Rod Hamilton, a regional director for the district’s construction program Build LACCD, at an expedited timeline the projects could be complete by the end of 2028. The town halls will inform the district’s request for proposals, which representatives expect to issue at the beginning of 2024. They also cautioned that much is still tentative — even the identified sites.

There is no question that the student demand for housing is high. Based in a spring 2022 survey of LACCD students, 14% of the respondents indicated they don’t have housing or their housing is insecure. As a percentage of LACCD’s fall 2023 headcount, that’d be about 17,000 students.

“This is the beginning,” said Sara Hernandez, a member of the board of trustees, speaking at L.A. City College. “I know housing, housing insecurity, homelessness is not the beginning here in Los Angeles. This has been going on for a long time, but this is the beginning of the district's efforts around housing because we now have the money.”

That money comes from last year’s voter-approved $5.3-billion bond, known as Measure L.A., which allocated $500 million to house the district’s students and workers. Up to three projects will be chosen, each to provide between 300 to 400 beds.

Housing as an expectation of community colleges

Hernandez said these events are important to hear community needs and build a coalition of support for these housing efforts.

LACCD joins a growing number of California community colleges developing housing on their campuses. Colleges in the Central Valley have a longer history of on-campus housing, but LACCD and other districts are catching up.

One of the latest in the region has been Orange Coast College, offering slightly more than 800 beds in 2020. LACCD presenters point out that what makes this district distinct from its Southern California counterpart is that the units will be affordable at $500 per month per bed.

A student walks at Pierce College.

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In its May 2023 housing resolution, LACCD affirmed its commitment to address student, faculty, and staff housing needs.

Despite this formal announcement, the realm of developing housing is still an area of growth for the district.

“It's challenging because, you know, we are in the industry of educating students. We are not a housing provider. You know, this is our first foray into the world of housing development,“ Hernandez said.

“It is really, really clear that, you know, this is a societal issue that has, you know, really made living in Los Angeles really, really difficult for young people, and we need to do more," she added. "And that's why we are really excited and motivated to link arms with the mayor, to link arms with the county, and be a part of the solution to this ongoing, regional wide housing crisis and homelessness crisis.”

Offering solutions

Participants at the town halls were not short of ideas for improving housing security.

At L.A. City College, the room was so packed that a few attendees gathered outside the open door. The energy in the room was tense, with a number of participants frustrated by the wait and wary of potential waste.

One suggested partnering with the University of California and California State University systems to provide housing stability to students transferring to the four-year degree programs. At the West L.A. town hall, Rueben Smith, the vice chancellor and chief facilities executive, said that LACCD is looking to partner with universities with existing housing inventory and work with the city of L.A. and the county to increase housing inventory.

One student worker at the LACC town hall, who said that she is $20,000 in debt from rental costs, suggested raising student worker wages so that they can afford rent and stay committed to their academics.

LACC student Reginald Johnson II told LAist he was a theater major and has been unhoused since the COVID-19 pandemic started. Before the pandemic he had been staying at the Union Rescue Mission, but being in close proximity with so many other people, without partitions, he was worried about getting sick. He said it was a “very hard choice” to return to street living, where he had previously been robbed.

Reginald Johnson II who is studying to become a stage manager prepares for a theatre program rehearsal at Los Angeles City College.

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Brian Feinzimer

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Among various ideas, he offered that those in the creative industry may be willing to donate toward housing students if their needs were more publicized, particularly at a campus like LACC, where students are pursuing careers in music, cinema, and theater. Another idea he offered is acquiring neighboring vacant motels and providing jobs for students who are studying property management in their degree program.

“We need to come up with solutions now so the students don't have housing insecurities to deal with and worry about right now,” Johnson II said. As a gay man and a person of color, Johnson II told LAist, he wants to be a voice for students or those afraid to speak up.

He appreciated LACCD’s plan to build new housing, but considered it a piecemeal approach to the larger problem. “So let's just try to figure out what other solutions and avenues that we can look at to provide solutions,” he said.

Students call for immediate housing and support

One participant, who has worked in residential real estate, said that these projects can take a decade, and recommended alternatives to building housing, such as purchasing from neighboring landowners. Hernandez noted later the risk of displacing residents.

The bureaucratic logistics caused frustration.

“Students are being robbed of their capacity to learn because they're too worried about just keeping a roof over their head,” said Jordan David, who is studying political science and is president of the organization Student Power. The organization also called for immediate housing solutions, post-graduation housing support, and student oversight in the planning process.

Reginald Johnson II sleeps on the Metro B line on his was into school at Los Angeles City College.

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Brian Feinzimer

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for LAist

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One student, who has been homeless while at LACC, asked if the student housing could be accompanied with supportive services. “Because a lot of the students you're going to bring in are probably experiencing homelessness, housing insecurity, trauma from their communities. Because we also have to acknowledge that a lot of homelessness is birthed in racism and prejudiced practices. And so there are specific communities that you're really going to have to support because of that,” the student said to echoes of agreement from others.

Smith, the chief facilities executive, said housing policies are still being developed and LACCD will seek further input as part of its shared governance process.

One law faculty member, Camille Goulet, whose e-mail comments were read by another, also asked for funding to be budgeted for support services, like health and wellness and security, and raised concerns about the risk of people enrolling as students for housing without sincere academic intentions.

Speaking later to LAist, trustee Hernandez said, “You can hear the frustration in the voices of students that, you know, their needs are not being served. As an educator, like, I know very well that we can't serve students, we can't help them attain their educational goals if they don't have their basic needs. And so we are doing everything that we can at the district to provide for that.”

Many students need housing, but who will get it?

Participants at Pierce were concerned about who would be eligible for the future housing.

The presenters said that the selection criteria were still to be determined, but were planning for an initial phase:

• Single students (with plans later to account for families and workers)
• Full-time students
• Those with a minimum 2.0 GPA

Pierce participants expressed concern about the confines of this criteria — what about students with families that need housing, can this topic be revisited? Do you really need to be a full-time student? What if $500 a month is still too expensive? And what is the consequence if a student’s GPA falls below 2.0 because of a job’s demanding hours or a mental health crisis — will they just get kicked out?

When asked by LAist how to prioritize the students, one of the participants, sociology professor James McKeever, said: “We need to look at our foster youth, we need to look at our homeless students, our housing insecure students, those who come from low income backgrounds first, because we're not going to have enough housing for everybody at this cost.”

The stress of housing insecurity

Jessica McCready, a cinema and television student who has previously been unhoused, attended the LACC town hall to learn about what was going on. While she appreciated the efforts to build housing — at this town hall, an eight-year timeframe was mentioned — she said she wants to see another convening to address more immediate needs.

“We had this meeting and we're talking about what's going to happen in eight years, but now, OK, let's have another and talk about maybe what's going to happen in six months to a year," she said. "I feel like that's a really, really useful, use of time. I think that's where we need to start.”

Rachel Alberto-Gomez is a deaf studies student at the Pierce town hall, whose health professor encouraged students to attend. In that class, the students discussed the relationship between mental health and housing.

Alberto-Gomez said they talked about “the stress of housing, how it causes us to be overwhelmed, not be able to perform, and to get the necessary education that we want.”

Alberto-Gomez hopes that future housing will offer sufficient security for students. She told LAist security is important to her from her experience as a woman walking alone to her car at night or waiting for the bus in the morning, which can feel scary and unsafe.

She knows quite a few students sleeping in their cars and appreciates that Pierce College has opened up its parking lot to unhoused students. She says housing is important for these students, but also for everybody, including herself.

“Luckily, right now, I'm OK, but in the future ... I don't know what the future holds,” Alberto-Gomez said. Currently, she depends on her partner for housing and her family lives far away. “And especially with, right now, as prices are increasing, housing is also increasing. So this program would really help us.”