The UCSD Faculty Association joins the Academic Senate, the Council of Chairs, the Graduate and Professional Student Association, and many other campus organizations and committees in expressing our outrage at the proposed rent hikes announced on March 8th. As others have noted, on average, these hikes reflect a 31% increase in rent, with increases for some apartments reaching up to 85%. In response to the eloquent outpouring of alarm and distress from all quarters, the University has now announced a one-time exemption for “current residents and all students admitted in Fall 2020.” Other than this temporary and limited stay of execution, the proposed rent increases remain in place.
Given the volume of feedback on the initial proposal, we do not need to belabor the harm that these rent hikes will cause to the academic mission of the university and its much-vaunted commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion.
This letter contributes two extra dimensions to the discussion.
First, we outline how UCSD found itself in this position. The structural deficit that HDH is now scrambling to cover is not a natural disaster; it is the result of a unilateral policy of irresponsible growth, in which the dignity, health, and food security of our most vulnerable community members has been gambled away to expand the footprint of the campus.
Second, we propose two simple principles to guide decisions about housing costs. We propose that graduate student housing costs and stipends be linked, such that rents for single-occupancy residences do not exceed 30% of guaranteed annual graduate income; and we demand transparency, shared governance, and accountability in these decisions so that the campus is not again blindsided by the announcement of drastic rent hikes
The Administration justifies the proposed rent hike based on HDH’s $18m debt, which is portrayed as the inevitable result of setting Mesa Nueva below mortgage costs in 2016. This explanation is at best incomplete and at worst misleading. HDH debt is the direct result of irresponsible policy decisions taken by Chancellor Khosla and by CFO Pierre Ouillet without adequate consultation and planning. The Khosla Administration has embarked on an unsustainable capital expansion model that has tripled campus debt in just 7 years, bloated administration salaries and crammed classes. Chancellor Khosla has championed this model, arguing that capital expansion projects pay for themselves while creating much-needed affordable housing.
The facts attest to the contrary.
The expansion of housing has led to less affordable housing. In just four years, graduate rents have grown four times faster than graduate stipends. With the proposed increases, rents will comprise between 35% and 85% of graduate student’s gross income. These rent increases are a direct contradiction to Chancellor Khosla’s own promises and plans, which originally established an annual increase of 3-4% for Nuevo East and stipulated that “lower actual financing rates would reduce the forecasted increase starting 2017-18.” The deviation from these original rates is not a natural, unavoidable disaster but the result of irresponsible growth and mismanagement.
The Khosla Administration has undermined the sustainability of HDH’s budget by making heavy use of “housing reserves”—i.e the excess of revenues generated by HDH. Specifically, since 2017, the Administration has taken more than $23m from housing reserves to fund capital projects. This strategy has continued even in the midst of the pandemic. Last November, the Khosla Administration committed an additional $35m from housing reserves for the new Theatre District Living and Learning Neighborhood, which also added $564m to UCSD’s debt obligations. In just over four years, the Administration has taken or committed at least $58m from housing reserves. This irresponsible growth has burdened HDH with massive debt obligations and increasingly unsustainable costs. Just in 2020-21, HDH debt and expenses grew by $14m. In 2021-22 they grew an additional $9m. This is $23m in just two years.
It is clear that HDH’s debt is the result of the Khosla Administration's decisions and bad planning. Justifying these rent increases on the basis of a meager $18 million deficit makes no sense in the context of a successful $2 billion fundraising campaign, a growing campus endowment, and, according to the Chancellor himself, a healthy and balanced budget.
In addition to being irresponsible and immoral, shifting the burden of the debt created by mismanagement onto graduate students compromises the core academic mission of the university. UCSD already has one of the worst records across UC in terms of equity and access for graduate students. Our campus has the lowest percentage of URM graduate students (11%) of any UC. One in four graduate students at UCSD experience food insecurity. Increasing rents between 30% and 70% is a discriminatory practice that directly affects URM students and those in vulnerable situations, and it undermines efforts underway like turning UCSD into a Hispanic Serving Institution.
The Khosla Administration’s argument that rents are the only way to solve HDH debt is patently false. While it is true that HDH is a self-supported auxiliary unit that cannot draw tuition funds, it is also true that the Chancellor has full discretion to subsidize auxiliary enterprises using other sources of funding and financial strategies. The unwillingness to explore these routes is a political choice made by Chancellor Khosla, whose actions ultimately reduce access to UCSD and inflict irreparable damage on the well-being of grad students, in order to solve a financial problem created by his Administration.
We are not opposed to expanding the pool of graduate housing on or near campus. However, we strongly reject the assumption that graduate student rents must be based solely upon calculations of HDH operational costs, recharge rates, and debt obligations, regardless of the consequences. We also reject any temporary solution that simply delays the fatuous “need” to sharply increase graduate student rents or introduce shared rooms. Instead, we demand that graduate housing operate on the basis of two interlinked principles.
First, graduate housing must be subject to permanent shared governance. Our core goals as faculty depend upon the recruitment and retention of a first-rate, diverse graduate student body. After all, graduate students are integral to UCSD’s academic mission: our status as a world-class university depends upon their teaching, research, and research assistance. Furthermore, our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion requires a diverse graduate student body that can connect with our undergraduate population and bring a breadth and wealth of experience to our teaching and research. The recent proposal to introduce shared rooms and dramatically increase rents for incoming students—burdens that would disproportionately fall on students from disadvantaged backgrounds and BIPOC communities—makes it crystal clear that the current growth model is not fit for purpose. Therefore, faculty must oversee all major decisions related to graduate housing moving forward.
Second, graduate students should have access to decent, affordable housing. That means HDH must offer all current and incoming graduate students single-occupancy rooms that cost no more than 30% of their guaranteed income. To be clear, double-occupancy rooms are not a “solution” to graduate housing cost or availability. Graduate students are valued community members, colleagues, workers, and collaborators, and they should be treated like the professional adults that they are. Forcing our graduate students to choose between a shared bedroom and food insecurity is outrageous, especially at a university that boasts about its strong financial situation and myriad capital projects.
In sum, we demand decent, single-occupancy housing at 30% or less of guaranteed gross graduate student income as the starting point for an HDH system that is subject to robust shared governance and faculty oversight.
Our commitments to academic excellence and diversity, equity, and inclusion require nothing less.
If you support these demands, please consider signing and distributing this petition
UC San Diego Faculty Association