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Housing
Brief History of Housing Advocacy
Although finding enough decent, affordable housing near Stanford has challenged our graduate students for decades, the shortage became acute with the Silicon Valley boom of the late 1990s. In 1998, concerned students from the GSC and the Graduate Housing Advisory Committee (GHAC) produced the first Graduate Housing Survey and Report, examining the magnitude of the problem and outlining a series of recommendations.
That spring, 883 students lost the lottery for on-campus housing. On May 22, over 1000 students and supportive Stanford staff members camped out in the Main Quad to protest the unavailability of affordable housing for graduate students. The publicity from this housing rally spurred the University to take immediate action by providing 251 spaces of off-campus subsidized housing, pledging to build 480 new on-campus studio apartments, and raising the minimum graduate stipend by 8%.
Negotiations with Provost Condoleeza Rice, Vice Provost Tim Warner, and Director of Housing and Dining Services Keith Guy the following year continued to produce results. In March 1999, Provost Rice announced that the University would obtain another 250 off-campus subsidized spaces and increase the minimum stipend by another 7% to help alleviate the housing crisis. This was ultimately increased to 700 spaces that fall due to enormous student demand (1071 students had failed to be assigned in the May lottery).
The most critical housing advocacy milestone was the incorporation of a requirement for construction of 1900 additional graduate housing units on campus in the General Use Permit (GUP) approved by Santa Clara County in December 2000. The first new additions to the on-campus housing supply, Studios 1 and 2, opened that winter. Despite this, the 2001 lottery produced the largest number of on-campus housing lottery losers ever -- 1350 students, 1000 of whom were later housed through the OCS program. Students living on their own were offered $100/month in a pilot housing stipend check subsidy program.
Studios 3 and 4 opened in fall 2001, and 5 and 6 in late fall of 2002. At that point, progress in on-campus construction halted as a dramatic economic downturn slashed University revenues, and debt load from new construction and other projects worried officials. The stipend check program was closed to new applicants and ultimately cancelled, although the OCS program was expanded further, with multiyear contracts signed with many apartment complexes to take advantage of the lower rents being offered. Meanwhile, in an attempt to balance its housing budget, the University raised rents on campus and in the OCS even as the outside rental market fell, resulting in a significant percentage of vacancies in graduate housing for the first time and increasing the drain on the University's financial resources. Despite the clear GUP requirements, no new housing construction, with the possible exception of a law school residence funded by a private donor, is planned for the foreseeable future.
In the years since the GUP was negotiated, student housing advocates have focused their efforts on making the housing assignment system more responsive to student needs. Goals include elimination of stopgap measures implemented at the height of the housing crisis such as "stuffing," the assignment of students to residences without a private bedroom. Students from the GSC and GHAC have also collaborated on additional surveys to assess student demand and housing preferences. We also continue to push the university to expedite the additional on-campus graduate housing construction specified by the GUP.
Finally, in an attempt to make the lottery system more flexible and give students more stable housing situations, the GSC housing task force of 2002-2003 designed a "continuous assignment proposal." This would allow students to choose among on-campus, off-campus, and stipend options in the spring lottery - and then to renew their contracts as long as their priority years remained. This year's GHAC students have continued to push for major restructuring of housing assignment policies and are working on a dynamic housing model to show how these changes would impact housing demand, distribution, and supply.
Recent Advocacy Efforts
During 2003-2004, the GSC housing taskforce along with student members of GHAC continued to advocate for continuous housing. The president and provost once again gave verbal support in meeting with GSC leaders for the idea, but there were few solid steps taken. Interest in the proposal was also expressed during a meeting with Lisa Marin and Gayle Christensen in December of 2003, yet it still appeared that change would happen at the earliest in 2005.The first GHAC meeting of 2003-2004 did not take place to until early 2004 and again it did not appear that much activity would take place this year.
A financial crisis due to the vacancies in the university housing system, especially the off-campus system, gave the problem of revamping the allocation process new urgency in administrators' minds. This meant that in mid-March during the second GHAC meeting of the year, Rodger Whitney and Todd Benson presented their own alternative proposal to the student representatives on GHAC for the first time. While GHAC student members agreed with some points of the proposal, they had serious reservations about others. The group was extremely concerned that hasty changes intended to stem the current financial drain on Stanford's resources would have serious unintended consequences for students.
The students both on GHAC and the GSC housing taskforce feel strongly that careful and serious thought be given to developing long-term solutions that are flexible enough to function through dramatic swings in our dynamic housing market. There is concern that this has not been done in the past, which is why student housing advocates want to proceed with caution.
One of our student GHAC members, Maria Gonzalez-Alcantara, volunteered her time to create a dynamic model that will allow us to see how various changes to current policies will influence housing supply and demand. This will allow us to simulate a wide variety of scenarios to inform our discussions in crafting sound policies that will benefit both students and the University. In order to do this, Maria needs longitudinal data from Housing Assignment Services from the past several years. As of March 2004, we have not gotten the data for this analysis, but hope to receive it soon, so that we can run some analyses of how certain policies may affect housing availability.
GSC Members Who Worked on This Issue in 2003-2004
Key Issues the GSC Plans to Address in 2004-2005
Using the results of the analysis of GHAC housing model to revamp the current continuous housing proposal based on this analysis. This should allow for a very strong basis for arguing for effective policies to improve the housing lottery. Advocating for additional housing to be built to make continuous housing more feasible and to address student demand for on-campus housing.
Key Stanford Administrators on This Issue
- Executive Director of Student Housing: Rodger Whitney (rwhitney)
- Associate Vice Provost, Residential & Dining Enterprises: Shirley Everett (ssje)
- Vice Provost for Budget and Auxiliaries Management: Tim Warner (trw)
- Housing Assignment Services Director: Todd Benson (tbenson)
Key Committees Related to This Issue
- Graduate Housing Advisory Committee (GHAC)
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