UC Merced's Student Housing Crisis

Hey there. My name is Shawn Duong, and this is my blog. I’m a rising third-year Computer Science and Engineering undergraduate student at the University of California, Merced, and I’m on track to becoming homeless by the end of August. This isn’t clickbait, and I’m not special. There are others in the same boat as me. This is our story, situation, and contributing factors that led to this crisis.

First off, this is me:


I’m a real person. I’m not just someone on the internet who likes to program, hack, and blog. I’m a real and breathing human being with a pulse and a backstory and sentience and thoughts just as complex as your own. I’ve come a long way from my roots and I’ve made a lot of friends along the way:


Like others, I’m not totally one-dimensional. I love programming and hacking, but I also love skating, painting, singing, baking, synthwave, alternative rock, photography, and so much more. I’m a huge fan of The Smashing Pumpkins and I probably listen to them every day. I’ve had good times, bad times, struggles, and successes.

In 2018, I was struck by a hit-and-run driver while I was crossing the street and I nearly died. I was severely disabled and although I made a remarkable and unexpectedly successful recovery, I still deal with debilitating physical pain to this day that I work hard to overcome and mask. I still have heavy PTSD from the event that I’ve fought hard for years to keep managed.

I founded IrisSec later that year, a computer hacking club that has today grown significantly larger than I would have ever anticipated. I’ve met so many amazing people from all walks of life and backgrounds. We’ve had truly memorable moments of triumph as a team and we’ve taken home trophies on multiple occasions; the real trophy for me is being able to hack alongside such an amazing team.

I chose to go to the University of California, Merced. The day I first stepped foot on that campus – before I was even a student – I fell in love. The moment I first got off the train and breathed in Merced air, I fell in love. I chose UC Merced. That day is still etched in my memory as one of the best days of my life. UC Merced wasn’t just an option for me; it was a calling. My first few months of college were the best months of my life and I loved every single last minute of it. If I could relive those days, I would.


Coming from Southern California, coming from the big city, Merced was a totally new and refreshing experience for me. Life seemed to move at a slower pace. I felt like for the first time in my entire life, I finally had the space to grow as a person and discover myself. I formed a real connection with UC Merced’s campus my first year of college.


My second year, COVID was in full swing. I chose to continue living in Merced, though, because I felt a longing for that independence which had seemed so essentially necessary to my growth as a person. Although I was unable to secure on-campus housing that year, I lived off-campus. I shuffled for a little bit before finally moving in with my good friend Gabe from the Solar Energy Association. That year, I formed a real connection with the city of Merced itself.

The summers were scorching hot but glowing like an early morning dream. The autumns were beautiful and full of warm colors and cool breezes like I had never experienced before. This is Earth, love, and warmth. This is hope, the light in the darkness.


The winters were cold and wet, and the springs less cold but equally wet. We had a storm in the winter that caused a lot of damage to our town. Fallen trees, broken fences, and floods. I learned that Merced and Mother Nature had a heartbeat-esque relationship, a constant cycle of highs and lows, of the elements, but also of humanity’s resilience and recovery. The beautiful city of Merced, like humanity, stumbles, but we always get back up, and we never stop. It matters not how slowly you go so long as you do not stop; we fall, but we keep going.


This city’s given me hope, but now I’m falling off that peak and descending. Last spring, UC Merced announced that classes would be in-person starting next fall. I was initially ecstatic. Over a year spent in quarantine, I felt like my college experience had been cut short. Over a year spent away from society and other people, I felt a deep longing to finally return to normalcy once again. Zoom classes were not cutting it; I needed to be in a classroom again.

I had a good thing going. Gabe and I would renew our lease for another year and keep our place with our affordable rent, solar power, and low cost of utilities in a fair neighborhood that cut the difference between Raley’s and Target by walking distance, a neighborhood near some major bus stops and as an added bonus, within walking distance of my friend’s place just a bit north. I’d continue to run the Solar Energy Association, now as the Vice President instead of as the Secretary. I could commute to school every day since the bus stop was only a 7 minute walk or so from me, and I could continue making enough money from working just so that I could pay rent, bills, groceries, and put the rest into savings.

Late last May, we got a letter: we’re out. The homeowner was not going to let us renew the lease because they were now planning on cashing out and selling the house. Houses had appreciated substantially and homeowners were now cashing out of their investments. We were back on the market for a house to call home.

Housing in Merced used to be incredibly affordable and low in competition. One year ago, a single room would go around for $290/month. I paid $330/month for my room which was objectively gigantic and gave me more space than I knew what to do with. Today, the market’s changed. Single rooms go around for $600, $700, and above for something barely half the size of a quad dorm back on campus. Competition is fierce; a listing goes up and gets 50+ applications within minutes. It used to just be that you gave a call, saw the house, filled in an application, signed a lease, paid a deposit, and then you’re done. Now, you give a call and don’t get a response until you retry for the 5th time spaced hours apart from each other. You fill in an application that requires references, a thorough credit and background check, a verification process of previous housing experience as well as work experience, and then you qualify to just see the house. You’re in competition with 50+ others all fighting for the same house as you, and the ungodly torrent of applications hitting the desks of criminally understaffed property management companies means that it’ll take 5 weeks before yours is processed – let alone even looked at! You then qualify to see the house with no guarantee that you’ll even get the lease at that point because, remember, there’s still competition even at this stage. If you get selected, then you can finally sign a lease and pay a deposit.

The market is a lot different today than it was a year or two ago. Not only is rent significantly higher, but wages have not increased to accommodate for this change. In this market, I will no longer be able to work enough to make rent, bills, and groceries, and my savings will start to be slowly eaten into. Even with the raise that I’ve gotten this upcoming year for my job at IT Network, it’s still not enough. Even if I got on EBT (food stamps), it still won’t be enough. Not only am I working two jobs, but I may have to pick up a third soon on top of my full-time studies and organizations!

More concerning than the increase in rent prices is the increase in competition. There’s a disturbing underlying implication: there is not enough supply to meet demand, the culprit of the title of this blog post. Whether this may be due to the possibility of over-admission or not, I don’t know and I’m frankly not informed enough on that subject to say so. What I do know is that there are simply too many students and not enough houses currently available on the market for rent. One thing I do know for sure, though, is that there are approximately 600 beds of on-campus housing that are being purposely kept vacant to understandably use as quarantine rooms.* As essential as that may be, and as much as I do agree with the fact that it’s necessary to have such rooms available for quarantine given our current situation, it’s nonetheless a fact that the housing market would be a bit less congested if those beds were to open up.****

Merced Station, a housing development marketed towards students, seems to be behind schedule. Although we were expecting 800 beds to be opened up, it seems like their phased rollout will only be able to serve a fraction of that figure by the start of the semester as construction continues making progress towards project completion.*** These are more beds that could have housed students and further decongested the local housing market in the city of Merced if only they were available.**

On-campus housing is below maximum capacity by 600 to use rooms for quarantine; Merced Station is only partially complete; classes will be in-person next semester; students will return to Merced to resume their studies; and there haven’t been any other major housing developments in the city of Merced. Although UC Merced is opening up a couple of new dorm buildings this upcoming semester from our Merced 2020 project, it looks like this is partially offset by our quarantine rooms. There have been rumours of over-enrollment contributing to a larger student population and therefore an increase in demand for housing, but I haven’t reviewed the sources nor the data related to these claims yet so I’m hesitant to provide a comment there out of fear of potentially propagating misinformation.

This has been a bleak discussion so far. To summarize, supply is not able to meet demand, which may lead to students who will experience homelessness and housing insecurity. This is an especially difficult topic for me because I cannot take the role of an unbiased third party here because I myself belong to this group – I am at a real risk of homelessness due to the housing crisis.

My financial aid, jobs, and insurance are tied to my status as a student, so dropping out is a difficult choice for someone like me. If I were to take a gap year, then it would disrupt my studies, jobs, and organizations with no security that they’d be waiting for me when I return. Transferring to another school would be a great option but transfer applications closed long before the severity of Merced’s housing crisis was realized, not to mention that it would disrupt my jobs and organizations regardless with zero chance of return.

My most logical choice is to continue my studies, regardless of whether or not I’ll have a roof over my head by the end of August. I might have to scrap up some savings to buy the most affordable second-hand van I can find and then camp around, parking in the day to go to school and then sleeping in it at night. Perhaps I could try looking for housing in Los Banos, Turlock, Atwater, or Livingston nearby, but being a student without a car means that I would have to rely on the bus schedule, and that would require me to scrap later classes and organizations just so that I could make it home on time – not to mention the consequences of missing the last bus and being stranded! I’ve applied to more houses than I’ve been able to keep track of by now, and I’ve unfortunately had little to no luck. The future is bleak and uncertain for me.

I’m not alone. The moment I open up Facebook, Reddit, Discord, or any other social media that we students use, it’s nothing but posts by students looking for housing with no luck. I’m aware that some students made a petition that’s gathered over 1.1k signatures as of writing this – well on the way to the 1.5k goal! I’m aware that campus administrators, student body figures, and others are getting torrents of emails from students voicing their concerns over the crisis. There are a non-insignificant number of students who are in the same shoes as me, who are facing the very real risk of homelessness just like I am.

I’m not sure what the solution is – I don’t. I just know that the first step to solving a problem is acknowledging that there is one. I encourage UC Merced’s administration to publicly announce that they recognize this problem.**** It seems like we’ve gotten nothing but radio silence thus far, and it’s demoralizing. We need leadership. We need help.

That’s our story, situation, and how we got here. Again, I’m neither alone nor special in this circumstance; there are unfortunately others facing the exact same fears and experiencing the same anxieties as I am right now. Each student is a person. Each student has a story. Each student needs help. We know that we can’t force the administration to do anything, so we’re asking.

That’s been us.

UPDATES

2021 Aug 4

* I was able to trace this claim back to an article by The Fresno Bee.
** This point was mentioned recently in an email by Charles Nies, the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs. A full disclaimer about the source of this screenshot: this was an email shared on the UC Merced Classifieds student Facebook group, and this was not an email that I personally received.

2021 Aug 9

*** As of today, Merced Station has announced that they will not be able to honor their August move-ins. Hundreds of students who had expected to be housed there just received an email today saying that they will not be able to be housed by their move-in date. To be perfectly clear, hundreds of students were just informed that they will not have housing by the start of school, contrary to what they had originally been told. The semester officially starts on the 18th, and hundreds of students were just told today, the 9th, that they will not have housing.

2021 Aug 12

**** UC Merced’s administration has officially publicly acknowledged this issue. There is a town hall today to hear student voices and concerns which I will be in attendance of to take notes and document. We students have received emails from the administration with some updates, including notice that the school is seeking approval to delay the start of in-person classes to August 30th, hotel accommodations for students, the opening of additional beds on-campus pending approval from the fire marshal, and the introduction of a program for a small cohort of first-year students allowing them to take their classes remotely, thus freeing up their need housing and partially reducing demand.

2021 Aug 24

This is the final update I will be making to this situation. The administration has announced that they will commit to housing students in temporary hotel rooms for all students who express housing insecurity. They’ve been delivering on their word and even going above and beyond by providing additional security and gas cards for commuters. I was able to secure a house with less than one day to spare and I therefore don’t know what’s going on with the hotel situation, but it looks like UC Merced has pulled through to power through this housing crisis! It looks like we’re going to be okay.