Cal Poly faculty needs family homes, not apartments

A recent editorial was very positive toward the Cal Poly idea of building workforce rentals on Slack Street (“In a city short on rentals, Cal Poly’s plan for employee housing has merit,” Jan. 23).

Please, forgive me if I put a damper on your enthusiasm. Cal Poly proposes to build 420 dwellings on 15 acres, which is 28 dwellings per acre. Bella Montaña, the workforce housing on Highland Drive, has less than half this density (69 dwellings for 5.3 acres, that is 13 per acre) and has been a failure — the main obstacle being lack of space.

Even President Jeffrey Armstrong publicly admitted that families want room for their children to play, something they don’t get at Bella Montaña. How are they going to get it if you double the density? Furthermore, as a professor emeritus, I know that faculty and staff want to live in a house, not an apartment, especially an apartment located right by student dorms and in a county area, which prohibits them from voting on city issues.

What Cal Poly needs to do is build more student housing on campus so that former family residences are vacated by students and filled with staff and faculty who will be able to enjoy the advantages of living in the city.

This story was originally published February 28, 2016 at 12:42 PM with the headline "Cal Poly faculty needs family homes, not apartments."