Comments on Stanford's General Use Permit
Statements of Solidarity
We are a coalition of hundreds of graduate students who stand in solidarity with the many advocacy groups and communities demanding equity under and/or affected by the Stanford General Use Permit.
We express our solidarity with the Stanford Coalition for Planning an Equitable 2035 (SCoPE 2035), who are advocating for:
1) The adoption of housing Alternative A in order to ensure Stanford fully mitigate the housing impact of bringing additional workers, faculty, and student to campus
2) An increase to the housing linkage ratio in order to reflect the severity of the housing crisis
3) The creation of affordable housing units for workers in proportions delineated by SCoPE 2035’s analysis
4) The adoption of the housing ordinances as part of the Conditions of Approval in order to promote housing affordability
5) The extension of transportation benefits to all workers, regardless of status and place of residence
6) The expansion of funding for Stanford-managed transportation, including fully funding Marguerite line to East Palo Alto and extending hours of SLAC shuttle
We are in solidarity with the Muwekma-Ohlone tribe, and recognize that Stanford is on unceded indigenous land. We urge the respect of Muwekma-Ohlone people’s perspectives and culture, and particularly stress the importance of protecting indigenous sacred sites as Stanford continues to develop. To act on this respect and recognition, we ask that Stanford consult with the Muwekma-Ohlone people before creating additional forested land on previous open areas of grassland or shrubs.
We call for increased communication with the City of East Palo Alto with respect to Stanford’s development. The East Palo Alto community is deeply affected by Stanford’s development and must be included in negotiations with Stanford.
We also support the full mitigation of Stanford’s development as outlined by public transportation and open space protection advocates as well as parents, students, and the school board of the Palo Alto Unified School District.
Condition of Approval: Affordable Housing for Graduate Students
As stated in Stanford’s GUP application, Stanford shall build 918 affordable housing units for graduate students. In order to ensure student housing affordability, Stanford must:
- Ensure future graduate housing units rental rate be no more than 30% of minimum graduate student stipend, in line with Department of Housing and Urban Development’s definition of affordable housing. Using 2019/20 minimum stipend levels of $10,956 per quarter, maximum rent should be approximately $939-$1191 per month. [1]
- Ensure any increase in graduate student rent has a proportionally commensurate increase in graduate student stipend amount in order to ensure that rent remains at levels that are 30% of the stipend. [2]
- Provide publicly available data on graduate student stipends across all schools disaggregated by department, gender, race and ethnicity.
Rationale:
Stanford graduate students have been deeply affected by the current housing crisis. Affordable housing has been increasingly hard to find near Stanford, leading more students to desire to live on Stanford campus. Stanford has responded to increased graduate student housing demand by building more units, but these units, while purportedly at below-market rates, fail to be affordable for graduate students. As per a recent Graduate Student Life Survey [3], at Stanford (April 2017), students on average spend 44% of their stipend on rent, with a quarter of student reporting spending greater than 63% of their income on rent. With the latest rent increase for 2019/20, average rent is $1,379 per month. This is well above the $939 - $1191 per month needed for affordability at the minimum stipend level, a common stipend across departments. Furthermore, only 15-20% of housing options on Stanford’s central campus (or subsidized by Stanford on campus) are affordable at this stipend level. Affordability concerns are cited as a major source of stress in graduate students’ lives, contributing to the mental health crisis on campus [4]. The mental health crisis has gained attention because of two recent graduate student suicides, but remains inadequately addressed. High living costs have also led to food insecurity among graduate students, with some surviving by picking fruit from campus trees [5].
In addition, aggregate statistics about graduate students hide the discrepancies among students that are exacerbated by unaffordable housing. As per the above-mentioned graduate school survey, graduate students of color receive significantly less stipend than white graduate students. Furthermore, stipend amounts are insufficient for families, who have to pay for both child care and expensive dependent healthcare [6]. In the graduate student survey, about a quarter of Stanford students with dependents reported receiving federal assistance on top of the Stanford stipend, while 28% rely on support from extended family. Issues of affordability are further exacerbated for international students with visa stipulations that prohibit their families from receiving public benefits and bar their dependents from working. These discrepancies among students cause serious concern for diversity efforts at the graduate school level. As noted by the graduate student survey, housing affordability is a crucial issue to tackle overall affordability on campus.
Stanford graduate student housing counts towards Santa Clara County’s very low income, low income, and moderate housing under the Regional Housing Need Allocation (RHNA), but these classifications have been insufficient to provide affordable housing for graduate students, and often do not match their actual incomes. Very low income, low income, and moderate income are classified as 50%, 50-80%, 80-120%, respectively, of county Average Median Income (AMI), which, according to HUD and and HCD calculations [7], respectively equate to income of less than $46,550, between $46,550 and $66,150, and between $66,150 and $105,200 for single-person households. According to the above graduate survey, at least 75% of graduate school students receive stipends less, many significantly less, than $40,000 a year, clearly requiring very low income housing. However, only 20% of singles housing in 2019/20 are at rent levels that would be classified as affordable for very low income residents (<$1,164 per month), suggesting that many graduate students are paying for “low income” and even “moderate income” housing while they are receiving stipends at “very low income” levels. Correspondingly, since the 2000 GUP, only 30% of constructed graduate housing units counted towards very low income, 52% towards low income, 10% towards moderate, and even 7% towards above moderate [8]. While this housing may be considered “affordable” under RHNA, it is not affordable for graduate students.
If the County of Santa Clara is going to receive RHNA credit for Stanford’s graduate student housing, it is imperative that the County ensure that these units are affordable to their occupants. Although there is no legally binding regulatory agreement on these units that restricts marketing and rent-up procedures to people at certain incomes, it is concerning that the County receives political advantages for RHNA completion (advantages which are increasing under recent state laws and bills) while these units are not meeting standard definitions of affordability. The county must provide oversight on Stanford’s compliance with the income ranges for each unit that contributes to the County’s RHNA. There must be stronger legal language in the Stanford General Use Permit to ensure affordability standards are met for graduate student housing, with outlined procedures for determining compliance and consequences for non-compliance.
In order to properly categorize graduate student housing under RHNA housing allocations, as well as simply provide truly affordable housing in the spirit of RHNA, the County must have transparent and accurate data on graduate student stipend amounts that are disaggregated by department, gender, race and ethnicity in order to account for disparities that the Graduate Student Life Survey indicated. Currently, the data is limited to surveys that rely on student reporting, while Stanford, as the sole administer of stipends, already has this data. Given the 918 new housing units that will be built under the General Use Permit and will fall under RHNA regulation, it is imperative that the County ensure that these new units are truly affordable.
Last, note that Stanford’s long-range planning process highlighted the issue of affordability, particularly for graduate students. Stanford has set up an Affordability Task Force as part of their long-range vision initiatives. Therefore, graduate student housing affordability is in line with Stanford’s vision of future, and General Use Permit provides an opportunity for Stanford to make important steps towards their affordability goals. Stanford’s new graduate student housing cannot simply be below market rate, but must be affordable based on the stipend Stanford gives to its graduate students.
Condition of Approval: Affordable Child Care for Students with Families
In order for the GUP to be approved, Stanford will:
- Build child care centers in the Campus Center District.
- Collect and make publicly available data about the number of student children living on campus and those likely to live on campus in newly constructed housing units, in order to inform capacity requirements of child care centers.
- Size the Campus Center District child care facilities’ square footage to provide space for all students’ children (provide a minimum of 35 square feet of indoor child care space per 12 graduate students)
- Expand the square footage of the Campus Center District child care centers when facilities are operating at 90% of capacity, in order to prevent the development of waitlists before new facilities are constructed.
- Make use of the child care centers free for up to 40 hours per week for all students whose families’ yearly incomes are below the HUD Very Low Income Limit [9] ($53,200 in 2018 for a household of a single mother and a child).
- Offer pro-rated subsidies for the child care centers for up to 40 hours per week for all students whose families’ yearly incomes are over the HUD Very Low Income Limit.
Rationale:
The issue of child care affordability is a particularly resonant one for students [10]. The Chronicle of Higher Education recommends that "... investment in campus child care is needed so that campuses [are] equipped to support growing numbers of college students with children" (2016). That growing number is due to several factors. One is a bias against women in the academy. Academia remains dominated by men; at Stanford, only 30% of faculty are women [11]. If the gender bias declines, there will be a larger population of students with children. Another is extended academic duration due to an expanded role of the researcher in the academy. The average length of time to PhD completion in the U.S. is 7.4 years for men and 8.0 years for women [12]. This means that most PhD students are in graduate school during their healthiest childbearing years. In the next months, as Stanford completes 300 new child care spots they will have achieved a 1:24 ratio of child care spots to graduate students and admin. In the recent past stanford had a ratio of 1:30 which clearly was inadequate and has 24-month waiting lists. While that a 1:24 ratio might be adequate now, if the bias against women in the academy continues to decline there will be a need for a higher ratio of child care spots, possibly 1:12 assuming a doubling of women in the academy. Given the above issues of bias, age, and child care availability, many students choose to delay having families until after graduate school, but the prospects of finding a career-opportune time for parental leave or spending time with young children do not look much better as a junior faculty. Many students, particularly women, feel forced to make the choice between academia and becoming a parent.
Parental status differentially affects men and women in academia. Mary Ann Mason and Marc Goulden at UC Berkeley document a “baby penalty” for women in academia. They find that men who have babies within the first five years of receiving their PhD are actually 38% more likely than their women counterparts to achieve tenure. They also find that among men and women who earn tenure-track jobs, men are more more likely to have children after getting those jobs than women are [13]. Structural barriers within the academy (lack of university-provided child care) combined with the fact that women continue to bear the “second shift,” contribute to the unequal representation of women in academia.
The issue of child care is one of both gender and economic equity. By failing to provide adequate child care for students in the locations in the Campus Center District where they need child care, Stanford is failing to address the material issues behind the ongoing gender gap in academia. Reproductive choice is not possible when graduate student economic circumstances are so constrained that the average yearly cost of child care is 75% of what graduate students earn in a year. The average monthly stipend at Stanford is $3,096 while the average monthly cost of child care for one child in Silicon Valley is $2,324 [14]. The only PhD students who can afford child care are those whose spouses have sizable incomes or whose parents and families are able to provide assistance. For the vast majority of students with families, child care is out of reach. While students with families may be able to complete the degree requirements necessary to obtain a degree, lack of child care makes it exceedingly difficult to do the types of professionalization work necessary for success on the job market -- conference presentations, publications, and networking.
As experiences at peer universities suggest, it is unlikely that Stanford will provide the necessary child care facilities without planning and clear guidance in the Conditions of Approval. For example, at University of California, Davis, while the 2003 Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) does state that land designated for student housing can be used for child care centers, the LRDP fails to give any specific targets for child care facilities, an issue noted by UC Davis administration themselves [15]. This vague and noncommittal language has not provided useful guidance for when to build childcare facilities, nor ensured a commitment to do so. Unsurprisingly, child care capacity continues to be a problem at UC Davis, with childcare centers operating at full capacity with long waitlists. Stanford should not repeat the mistakes made by nearby universities in California. This CoA is necessary to provide a build out rate tied to student population, clearly stipulating the amount of childcare facilities needed and when they will be required.
For citation and details of child care needs for students at Stanford please review the 2017 Stanford University Graduate Student Life Survey, developed by the Stanford University Graduate Student Council and the Diversity and Advocacy Committee: https://tinyurl.com/gradlifesurvey [16].
In order to make education and careers in academia accessible to all students, regardless of sex or parental status, Stanford needs a viable and detailed plan to create affordable child care facilities for all student parents.