Gentrification

Finding affordable housing this past summer was insane. I was looking for a two-bedroom apartment for under $2000/month. There were very few available units that fit this classification; and anything that did was snatched up very quickly. I went to several apartment viewings, and I was one of at least twenty people there. At that point, how do you even decide who would be the "best" tenant?

Of course, there were several two-bedrooms going for $2400 or more per month. But even those had a ridiculously high demand.

According to Business Insider, Berkeley is the most expensive college town in the U.S. I suppose that makes sense because of the growth of the tech sector in Silicon Valley and San Francisco has caused a huge housing shortage in San Francisco, and rents are skyrocketing so much that it is now more expensive to rent in San Francisco than in New York. So people are moving to nearby places with cheaper rent such as Oakland and Berkeley. The demand is so high in these cities that rent rates are driven up--it's the basic supply-demand graph from Econ 1.

What does this mean for students? This means that if things continue in the way they are going, UC Berkeley will become an unaffordable school for many students. Not because of the tuition prices; but because living close enough to the school costs too much--perhaps up to twice the cost of in-state tuition (it's about halfway there right now). This is even seen now; more and more people that I know are choosing to live in El Cerrito, San Pablo, or Walnut Creek and commuting to campus every day. Or, students are resorting to desperate measures to stay in the city. Oh yeah, and the UC has no plans to build more university housing.

What are the possible effects of this? Here are two:
1) Any sense of UC Berkeley community will be destroyed because it will become a commuter school.
2) Only the super-rich will be able to afford to attend Berkeley. No wait, only the super-rich will be able to afford to attend and live in Berkeley. An important distinction.

UC Berkeley is a public university. It is supposed to be accessible to all eligible California residents, because their taxes go toward supporting the school. But the school will become inaccessible when the cost of living is more than students can afford. Only students who have access to large sums of money will be able to cough up the finances necessary for insane monthly rents plus a 2x rent security deposit.

So what happens next? The already socioeconomically privileged will gain more privilege because they have access to a world-class education. Those who are not so well-off will be unable to access the privilege that UC Berkeley gives, and they will not advance as far. So indirectly, a public institution will have contributed to increasing gentrification.

The ridiculous housing market in the Bay Area needs to be fixed. I don't know how, but rents cannot keep climbing higher.