Cal Poly is great for SLO, but for its neighborhoods, not so much, residents say
Cal Poly has a Master Plan in place to add to its on-campus housing stock over the next decade, but San Luis Obispo residents living near the university fear it’s too little, too late.
Since buying their home in 2009, longtime SLO resident Kathie Walker and her husband, Steve Walker, have lived near Cal Poly in the Fredericks Street neighborhood, which is increasingly populated by student rental housing units.
The longer the Walkers have lived on Fredericks Street, the more their former permanent neighbors have decided to sell to investors, which they say hurts the sense of community in their neighborhood.
“If I had my choice, I would want to have neighbors that I knew, that I built a relationship with, where you have that sense of community,” Kathie Walker said. “We don’t have that because we build that with the incoming students, we get to know them, we exchange information, and then they leave. And then we start over again when the school year starts again.”
“We get older, but the people around us never do,” she said.
The university has plans to add more than 7,000 beds both on or just off campus, nearly doubling its capacity, but administrators are frank that some amount of private off-campus housing — and students living in single-family homes in residential neighborhoods — is a fact that comes with all college towns — as are the higher rental prices that come with that student demand.
Student-dominated neighborhood lacks sense of community, residents say
Right now, all is quiet in the Walkers’ neighborhood.
In the summer, it stands empty, the rentals unoccupied by their tenants. But that will change in a matter of weeks when students return for fall quarter.
The Walkers said this is a side effect of a student population that only needs the property for nine months of the year and a housing rental market with low availability.
Student renters often maintain their lease through the full year despite not living in the units during the summer months, Kathie Walker said.
On the Walkers’ street, the couple estimated between 25% and 50% of the homes are rentals, most of them unoccupied during the summer. Many of these rentals, she said, are owned by investors or investment groups rather than independent owner-landlords.
In one example near her, she said investors purchased a property in the $900,000 range, added a pair of bedrooms, and now charge $12,500 a month for the house, split across as many as half a dozen occupants.
“As long as rents are that high, you’re gonna have investors buying the houses,” Kathie Walker said.
“When we first moved here in 2009, there was a still a fair amount of residents who lived in this neighborhood, that cared about the neighborhood and wanted to hold on,” she said. “When somebody says ‘I can’t do it anymore,’ then it’s that much more effort to try to hold the line.”
While living in their current home, the Walkers said they have seen increased littering in their yard, particularly during the school year, when partying keeps their neighborhood awake later into the night.
Karen Adler, who has lived near the university for more than 50 years and serves as chairperson of the Alta Vista Neighborhood Association, said the well-being of SLO’s neighborhoods has taken a backseat in the city’s priorities.
“Neighborhood wellness is not important (to the City Council) and the fact is, families are moving out because a lot of the older people cannot coexist with such young students next door to them,” Adler said. “Their lifestyles are totally different.”
Adler said she tries to welcome new students to the neighborhood and remind them of noise ordinances, but said enforcement of those rules has been lacking.
“We need the city to back neighborhoods up, and they’re not doing that,” Adler said.
Like Walker, Adler said she has seen her neighborhood gradually transition from resident-owned single-family homes to student-oriented rentals as landlords and investors have bought out her neighbors.
She said one three-bedroom home near her sold for more than $1 million to new owners who added a room to the main structure and built a duplex behind the house, allowing around 18 students to live on one lot.
“That’s a lot of people to put in a residential neighborhood — the city shouldn’t let them do that,” Adler said. “State law says you can build if there’s room, so it’s not all the city’s fault.”
Residents for Quality Neighborhoods vice president: Cal Poly sets ‘floor’ for rent in SLO
Brett Cross, vice chair of Residents for Quality Neighborhoods, an organization dedicated to improving quality of life in SLO neighborhoods, said Cal Poly’s individual bed pricing sets the market floor for what students expect to pay in SLO, which allows investors and landlords to charge more for full rooms or homes in the area.
He said that floor is around $1,100 to $1,500 a month for a room, depending on your proximity to Cal Poly’s campus.
“If you’re a family and you’re looking to buy a place or rent a place, you’re just getting outbid by investors and Cal Poly students that are just able to pay more,” he said.
All first-year Cal Poly students are required to live on campus, which costs $10,356 for an academic year in a standard residence hall double-occupancy room. Students are also required to purchase a dining plan.
Spread over the 10 months of the academic year that a student would live on campus, that rate per month is between $965.40 in the least expensive triple and quad residences in the yakʔitʸutʸu dorm and $1,339.50 in the most expensive apartments with private bedrooms.
Associate vice president for student affairs Jo Campbell said residence hall rates are regularly compared against local apartment complexes in accordance with 2017’s Assembly Bill 990, which requires California State Universities to provide housing cost comparisons with local housing options of a similar size.
“Each spring we look at what the rates are locally at different apartment complexes,” Campbell said. “We update that every year, so that is part of our comparison.”
According to Cal Poly’s data, most apartment complexes near the university are priced just above the monthly average a student would pay at most residence halls on campus, assuming a 10-month school year from September to June for the student body.
But many of these local apartments require 12-month leases, making them overall more expensive than Cal Poly’s on-campus offerings, indicating Cross’ statement on the rent floor may be correct.
For example, with the exception of The SLO, which charges $599 for a shared living space, and The Hacienda, which charges $662.50 per person in a four-bedroom residence, most units fall between $1,050 and $1,700 per person each month, which is more than the averages of most residence hall rates.
Cross said the City Council does not want to “challenge Cal Poly on building more housing” and blamed the university for rising rents and home prices in SLO.
“I’m surprised that (vice president for student affairs) Keith Humphrey and (assistant vice president for executive communications and media relations) Matt Lazier haven’t recognized that they’ve created their own problem,” Cross said. “They don’t have enough housing on campus for the students. The students are in the neighborhoods, (and) they’re driving up the rents and housing costs.”
As long as enrollment at Cal Poly stays strong and even rises in coming years, Cross said, the problem will persist, regardless of the university’s Campus Master Plan to house more students on campus by 2035.
“It’s taking them too long to get there,” Cross said. “That’s so far out in the future, when we’re talking another 12 to 15 years out, and that doesn’t include any growth in the student population as well.”
The university’s Master Plan projects the addition of 7,200 additional beds over its duration, resulting in a total of 14,958 beds by the end of the plan in 2035.
This will be distributed across new residence halls and residential neighborhood space near the university, the plan said.
City, Cal Poly responds to resident concerns
Humphrey said he did not agree with Cross’ assertions about population size increases for the university.
“That math just doesn’t make sense to me at all,” Humphrey said. “Cal Poly’s enrollment is set by the state and the CSU, so we do anticipate modest enrollment growth — 1% or less — as projected in the Master Plan.”
He also said growth will stay consistent with its goals of housing more students under the terms set by the Master Plan.
“We can’t grow unless we add more housing, and we can’t grow any further than the approved amount in the 2035 Master Plan,” he said. “Cal Poly is firm on holding on to that limit, and we’ll have more housing in 2035.”
Humphrey said while he understood the reactions of community members like Cross, Walker and Adler, he disagreed on the causes of the housing crunch in SLO.
“Cal Poly is like every other university town in the country,” he said. “I think that saying Cal Poly setting the rates is not really accurate. (In) every university town in the country, rental rates (and) real estate around a university tend to be a little more costly than the rates further away.”
SLO will never “exist in an environment where no students live off campus,” Humphrey said, and to expect otherwise is “unrealistic” and ignores the positives of having a student presence in the community.
He said he hopes SLO residents will trust the actions of the university and its plan to house more students on campus.
“Sometimes folks tell us that they want to live in a community that doesn’t have college students in it. Well, this is not that community,” Humphrey said. “Cal Poly is a major part of the San Luis Obispo community — the students, the university, our faculty, our staff, contribute vibrantly to the quality of life that everybody experiences in San Luis Obispo.”
As for the city’s perspective, community development director Michael Codron said there is little it can do to control the price of rent near Cal Poly, as it does not have any form of rent control.
“In terms of the affordability issues, it’s the market that determines (home) prices, and without some formal form of rent control, local governments don’t have much of a role to play in terms of affordability other than through the planning we do to ensure that there are a variety of housing types developed to meet the needs of the entire community.”
Zoning standards and measures like the city’s newly updated Inclusionary Housing Ordinance are the city’s main options for developing housing that meets the needs of the community, he said.
The city “worked closely” with Cal Poly on the development of its Master Plan, Codron said, and has a “healthy” relationship with the university. He said the city expects Cal Poly to meet the goals laid out in its Master Plan.
A report to the city on the state of Cal Poly’s housing will be delivered to the city Sept. 6, he said.
This story was originally published August 21, 2022 at 5:05 AM.
