San Mateo County Community College District Moves On Student Housing Vision

Press release from the College of San Mateo:

October 19, 2021

The article below originally appeared in the San Mateo Daily Journal and is being reprinted with permission.

Aiming to bring a long-time vision of student housing to life, San Mateo County Community College District officials are pushing to meet a tight two-week deadline to qualify for millions in state funding for the project.

“I think it’s an outstanding opportunity for the entire community college system, the entire system in California,” Dr. Richard Storti, executive vice chancellor for Administrative Services, said during a district Board of Trustees meeting Wednesday, Oct. 13.

Student interest

The district would also be required to list the units at below-market-rate. A significant number of students would be interested in student housing, according to a 2020 study by The Scion Group. About 2,000 units would be in demand if the development was located at the College of San Mateo, up to 2,551 units when the survey suggested the housing would be available at below-market rates.

It’s still unclear what types of units would be included in the project which will depend on whether the board is interested in permitting families and children to live on site. And officials noted a blend of approaches would be needed to fully address housing needs, such as capitalizing on public and private partnerships or redevelopment of existing commercial and office buildings.

Either way, Board President Thomas Nuris discouraged the district from flipping a commercial space, noting it’s often easier less expensive to build from scratch even if a building needed to be demolished.

Speaking on who should be permitted to live in the housing, Pimentel said he would not support allowing international students to claim the spots built by public funding. Renting units to foreign students at market rates was previously suggested as a way to subsidize housing for low-income students.

Alternatively, Trustee Maurice Goodman said the units should also be open to students who would have attended classes at one of the county’s three community colleges had financial barriers not pushed them out of the region.

“This housing crisis, this economic crisis many of our students and our residents find themselves in has led a lot of our students to move out of this area, to move out of our county. So by disallowing them to come back to the county that they once called home would not be something I’d be OK with,” Goodman said.

Next steps

Trustees were eager to jump on the opportunity, with Trustee Richard Holober saying it’s “now or never.” Still, he lambasted the state for the short notice it gave to the institution and supported public calls to seek adequate public comment, a sentiment shared by Trustee Lisa Petrides.

Alternatively, Nuris noted that the district has long worked on the initiative before the pandemic forced momentum to come to a “grinding halt.” Rather than getting “bogged down in a lot of detail,” and immediately engaging with neighborhood concerns, Nuris said his job is to put the needs of the students first.

“Those are the selfish concerns of a lot of people. They’re not looking at what we’re looking at, which is what’s in the best interests of the students and the district,” Nuris said.

By seeking funding in the first round, the district would also be competing against fewer institutions for funding, increasing the likelihood the application will be approved and further encouraging the mad dash to submit an application by the Oct. 31 deadline, officials suggested.

Bailey said the state would give a final decision on the application between May and July next year. Meanwhile, the district would conduct outreach with the community and stakeholders, he said.

“It’s a big climb, there’s no doubt about it. We are not fooling ourselves whatsoever,” Bailey said. “And we’re going to need additional resources to be able to do it but this is a priority of the board and it’s a priority of ours.”

This press release was produced by the College of San Mateo. The views expressed here are the author’s own.