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UCLA Will Guarantee Four Years Of Housing To New Undergraduates Starting Fall 2022
UCLA houses 14,500 undergraduates on campus. Another 6,000 undergraduate and graduate students, some with families, are in off-campus apartments.
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Alan Nyiri
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UCLA
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Just weeks before issuing its admissions decisions, UCLA announced that it will guarantee four years of housing for all incoming undergraduate students starting this fall.
Incoming freshmen will have access to up to four years of housing in university-owned residences. Transfer students will have two years.
The housing guarantee was made possible through the construction of a 17-story high rise called Gayley Heights, along with two apartment buildings. Collectively, they’ll provide an additional 3,125 beds for undergraduates. Last fall, UCLA opened two other residence halls.
UCLA’s undergraduate housing guarantee has been in the works for years, said Vice Provost for Enrollment Management Youlonda Copeland-Morgan. It’s also part of wider efforts to shift from a commuter to a residential campus. Currently, about 31,600 undergraduates are enrolled in UCLA, but fewer than half live on campus.
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Living on or near campus, Copeland-Morgan added, enables students to extend their learning beyond the classroom. “It also gives them an opportunity to collaborate with other students, to learn from one another and really take advantage of the great diversity UCLA’s student body has to offer,” she said.
The housing guarantee applies to all students, including those with dependents.
“Whether they are first-freshman students or they’re transfer students, we welcome our students with their families,” Copeland-Morgan said. "And we have programming around that so that those students who have young children will have a place that can feel like home.”
The university’s announcement comes amid a statewide affordable housing crisis. Many college students have to couchsurf, sleep in their cars or find temporary refuge in hotels.
In January, state lawmakers introduced legislation to provide $5 billion in zero-interest loans for the construction of housing at UC, CSU and community college campuses. More recently, Governor Newsom signed off on a bill to limit judges’ ability to force public colleges to cap their enrollment — this after local residents sued UC Berkeley over the impact of the school’s growth on city services, noise and scarce local housing.
UCLA, which has the same number of students as UC Berkeley, received a record number of applicants for the coming school year. Freshman applicants will get admission decisions by April 1.
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An expansion of graduate housing at UCLA is also in the works, beginning with the opening of a new apartment complex come fall.
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