2024-111 California Colleges

October 14, 2025
2024-111

The Governor of California
President pro Tempore of the Senate
Speaker of the Assembly
State Capitol
Sacramento, CA 95814

Dear Governor and Legislative Leaders:

As directed by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, my office conducted an audit of the State’s three systems of public higher education—the University of California (UC), the California State University (CSU), and California Community Colleges (CCC)—and each system’s efforts to provide affordable student housing. In general, we determined that despite the State’s efforts to address student housing needs, the UC Office of the President, CSU Office of the Chancellor, and CCC Chancellor’s Office have not assumed strategic leadership roles in planning for affordable student housing throughout their respective systems.

For example, the system offices do not direct or conduct any centralized planning efforts to increase the availability of student housing, relying instead on their individual campuses to conduct such planning. The system offices compile and submit to the Legislature annual capital outlay plans that are informed by their respective campuses and do not specify how proposed housing projects would contribute to accommodating the needs of students. We recommend that the Legislature clarify in state law its intent that system offices should assume stronger oversight in planning campus housing, which should include requiring the systems to conduct a regular assessment of unmet demand for campus housing at each of their respective campuses. In doing so, the systems could better ensure that their campuses are working toward making college more affordable while helping more students access higher education by best serving their housing needs.

The State established the Higher Education Student Housing Grant Program in 2021 with the goal of providing affordable, low-cost housing options for students enrolled at UC, CSU, and CCC campuses. However, these projects may not remain affordable after construction because of insufficient monitoring requirements. We also found that the UC, CSU, and CCC campuses we reviewed did not always provide accurate information on their websites about the cost of attendance or the availability of housing assistance programs. To address this issue, the systems should regularly monitor their respective campuses’ websites for compliance with applicable laws.

Respectfully submitted,

GRANT PARKS
California State Auditor

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Selected Abbreviations Used in This Report

CBO	Community-based organizations
CCC	California Community Colleges
CSU	California State University
HUD	U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
SEARS	Student Expenses and Resources Survey
Student Aid	California Student Aid Commission
UC	University of California

Summary

Key Findings and Recommendations

More than 2 million students are enrolled through California’s three systems of public higher education—the University of California (UC), the California State University (CSU), and the California Community Colleges (CCC). Students have the options of living in campus-operated student housing facilities (campus housing) or living off campus, which can include living alone, or with parents, relatives, or housemates. Research conducted by CSU Northridge, the University of Oregon, and the University of Connecticut found that students who live in campus housing have better outcomes, such as higher grade point averages (GPAs) and graduation rates, than students who live off campus. Nevertheless, campuses are able to accommodate only a proportion of their student population who seeks campus housing. To address high construction and land costs for campus housing and to facilitate access to higher education for students with low incomes, the State established the Higher Education Student Housing Grant Program (Grant Program) in 2021 to provide affordable, low-cost housing options for students enrolled at the three systems.

To address these findings, we recommended that the Legislature should consider clarifying in statute a stronger leadership role for the system offices related to planning campus housing and requiring them to regularly assess their campuses’ unmet demand for housing. We also recommended that the Legislature should establish a working group composed of representatives from each of the three systems to identify opportunities for intersegmental collaboration to build campus housing. Further, we recommended that the three systems should establish policies and processes to ensure that beds or rents remain affordable for the life of each campus Grant Program facility and that they should establish procedures to verify that their campuses’ websites reflect accurate housing information. Lastly, the CSU Office of the Chancellor should refrain from spending Grant Program funding on projects that have not been submitted to or approved by the Legislature.

Agency Comments

The UC Office of the President and the CSU Office of the Chancellor generally concurred with our recommendations. However, the CSU Office of the Chancellor disagreed with the finding that the Spartan Village project at San José State was not authorized. The CCC Chancellor’s Office did not have any comments on the findings or recommendations. Because we did not make recommendations to the nine campuses we reviewed, we did not expect nor did they provide responses.

Introduction

Background

In recent decades, California has experienced a persistent and escalating housing shortage that has contributed to rising housing costs, increased homelessness, and growing barriers to housing access for residents across the State. This shortage has had a particularly severe effect on college students, with recent reports indicating that more than half of surveyed students across all three of the State’s systems of higher education have experienced housing insecurity—lacking a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence—and that 5 percent to 20 percent of college students have faced periods of homelessness. Research from the Center for Postsecondary Success and the National Institutes of Health shows that students who experience housing insecurity are more likely to have lower mean GPAs, poorer physical health, and higher rates of depression and anxiety than their peers.

In response to the State’s housing crisis, the Legislature enacted a number of laws and appropriated targeted funding to expand housing. One of its initiatives is the Grant Program, which focuses specifically on increasing affordable student housing for the purposes of facilitating access to higher education for students with low incomes. The Legislature declared that the shortage of student housing places higher cost pressure on local housing markets, exacerbating the broader housing crisis and creating challenges for communities near college campuses.

Additionally, the Public Policy Institute of California reported that California is facing a degree gap—a shortfall of college graduates compared to the State’s workforce needs. To address such concerns, the Governor established a statewide goal of achieving 70 percent postsecondary degree and certificate attainment among working-aged Californians by 2030. This goal will likely lead to increased enrollment at all three state systems, putting further strain on student housing. Ensuring that housing is both available and affordable for college students is therefore vital to achieving this goal and to advancing the State’s overall housing, economic, and higher education objectives.

California’s Public Higher Education Systems

California’s three systems of public higher education—UC, CSU, and CCC—serve a combined total of more than 2 million students across the State, some of whom live in campus-owned, campus-operated, and campus-affiliated student housing facilities. Each system plays a distinct role in California’s higher education landscape. The UC system, which operates 10 campuses, is the primary state-supported academic agency for research and is the only one of the three systems with the authority to award the doctoral degree in all fields of learning. The CSU system, with 23 campuses, is the nation’s largest system of four-year higher education, and its primary mission is undergraduate and graduate instruction through the master’s degree. The CCC system, comprising 116 campuses, is the largest system of higher education in the country, and its primary mission is to advance California’s economic growth and global competitiveness through education, training, and services that contribute to continuous workforce improvement. The CCC system offers academic and vocational instruction through the second year of college, grants associate degrees, prepares students for transfer to four-year institutions, and may award baccalaureate degrees in certain circumstances.

As Figure 1 shows, each system has a governing board that establishes policy and provides guidance for it. Each system also has a central administrative office—the UC Office of the President, the CSU Office of the Chancellor, and the CCC Chancellor’s Office—that supports its campuses and oversees the system, which includes overseeing capital projects such as campus housing. Under state law, any campus of the UC or CSU system and the governing board of any CCC district may establish and maintain student housing facilities.

Figure 1
California’s Public Higher Education Systems Differ in Size, Governance, and Administrative Oversight

Figure 1 provides a comparison of California’s public higher education systems, focusing on the University of California (UC), California State University (CSU), and California Community Colleges (CCC). The figure highlights key aspects such as size, governance, and administrative oversight. The UC system, governed by the Board of Regents, consists of 10 campuses with 300,000 students. The CSU system, overseen by the Board of Trustees, includes 23 campuses with 460,000 students. The CCC system, managed by the Board of Governors, comprises 116 campuses governed by 73 districts, with 1.5 million students. The figure also notes that each system offers campus housing, with the UC and CSU systems providing housing at all campuses, while only 16 CCC campuses offer housing.

Source: State law, system websites, and system enrollment data.

* The CCC systemwide Fall 2024 enrollment does not include enrollment for Calbright College and Victor Valley Community College because the CCC Chancellor’s Office had not received Fall 2024 data from those colleges as of August 2025.

The Joint Legislative Audit Committee (Audit Committee) directed us to select a total of nine campuses for review—three campuses from each system. Our selection rationale included, but was not limited to, the campuses’ regional housing costs, enrollment, geography, and housing capacity—which is typically defined as the number of beds available in campus housing. Further, we evaluated whether the campuses received any funding from the State to increase their housing capacity or to address housing insecurity. As Figure 2 shows, we selected UCLA, UC San Diego, and UC Santa Cruz from the UC system; Fresno State, Cal State Fullerton, and San Francisco State from the CSU system; and American River College, Napa Valley College, and Orange Coast College from the CCC system.

Figure 2
We Reviewed Three Campuses From Each of the Systems

Figure 2 is a map showing the enrollment and on-campus housing capacity for three campuses from each of the University of California, California State University, and California Community Colleges campuses that we reviewed. The figure underscores a disparity between student enrollment and available on-campus housing across the three systems.

Source: Analysis of campus enrollment and capacity data from Fall 2024.

Note: We selected American River College—a campus that does not currently offer student housing—to ensure that the audit reflects the full range of campus responses and systemwide planning efforts to address student housing needs.

Campus Housing

Students enrolled at California’s public colleges and universities pursue a variety of living arrangements depending on their financial circumstances, campus location, and individual preferences. Although some students reside in campus housing, others may live alone, with parents, relatives, or housemates, which we refer to throughout this report as residing off campus. Campus housing can have a positive influence on students’ academic experience, financial stability, and overall well‑being. For example, beginning in 2018, the National Survey of Student Engagement conducted a three‑year study that found that first-year and second‑year students who lived in campus housing maintained a higher rate of enrollment than those who lived off campus, including students who lived with their families. Additionally, CSU Northridge reported that first-time college students who entered the university in Fall semesters from 2005 through 2018 and lived in campus housing tended to have higher first-year GPAs, higher third‑term continuation rates, and lower academic probation rates than comparable students who lived off campus. Similar research from the University of Oregon and the University of Connecticut concluded that students who opt to live in campus housing their first year and continue residing there during their second year have higher cumulative GPAs, are more likely to remain in school, and are more likely to graduate than their peers who live off campus.

Nonetheless, as Figure 3 shows, student enrollment at the three systems greatly exceeds their campuses’ total housing capacity. In academic year 2024–25, the UC system accommodated about 41 percent of its student population, with more than 122,000 students occupying campus housing across all UC campuses. The proportion of students in campus housing varied among the campuses of the UC system, ranging from a low of 24 percent of enrolled students at UC Berkeley to a high of 51 percent of enrolled students at UCLA. Notably, even at UC—the system with the greatest housing availability—most students live off campus, underscoring the limits of existing capacity.

Figure 3
The Number of Students Enrolled Systemwide Significantly Exceeded the Number of Available Beds in Fall 2024

Figure 3 is a bar chart comparing the housing waitlist, housing capacity, and total enrollment for the University of California, California State University, and California Community Colleges systems in Fall 2024. The figure underscores the unmet demand for campus housing across all three systems, with the UC system having the highest number of students on housing waitlists and the CCC system having the lowest housing capacity.

Source: Systemwide enrollment data and systemwide capacity reports.

The enrollment presented reflects only the 16 CCC campuses that offered campus student housing in academic year 2024–25.

During the same period, the CSU system had the capacity to house about 15 percent of its student population, although housing rates varied significantly by campus. For example, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo housed about 38 percent of its enrolled students, and CSU Bakersfield housed slightly less than 4 percent of enrolled students. Campus housing is particularly limited in the CCC system. According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, CCC students are less likely than CSU students and especially UC students to move to new locations to attend school, likely making campus housing a more attractive option for students at the latter two systems. In fact, as of Fall 2024, only 16 of the CCC system’s 115 physical college campuses offered campus housing, accommodating less than 3 percent of the enrolled students at those 16 campuses and less than 1 percent of enrolled students systemwide.

Unmet Demand for Campus Housing

Although not every student seeks campus housing, the absence of housing options or lack of availability at certain campuses results in unmet demand. When more students apply for a campus’s housing program than it can accommodate, the campus will generally establish a student housing waitlist that provides some insight into the demand for campus housing. From Fall 2022 through Fall 2024, all 10 UC campuses reported students on housing waitlists, with a systemwide total of more than 13,000 students on waitlists in Fall 2024. In comparison, only five CSU campuses reported that they had students on waitlists for campus housing in Fall 2024. However, CSU campuses reported their waitlist numbers after instruction had already begun, when those figures would have been at their lowest. For Fall 2024, 12 of the 16 CCC campuses that provide student housing collectively reported a total of 515 students waiting for campus housing. As Figure 4 shows, five of the nine campuses we reviewed across the three systems reported a waitlist for campus housing in Fall 2024.¹ These waitlist numbers alone—which do not fully reflect all unmet demand—make clear that students across all three systems would likely benefit from additional housing.

Figure 4
Five Campuses We Reviewed Reported Having Campus Housing Waitlists in Fall 2024

Figure 4 is a bar chart that compares the number of beds to the number of students on housing waitlists in Fall 2024 across five campuses we reviewed. The figure highlights the following data: UCLA had 24,202 beds with 2,303 students on the waitlist, UC San Diego had 22,070 beds with 2,468 students on the waitlist, and UC Santa Cruz had 8,888 beds with 2,291 students on the waitlist. For the CSU campuses, Fresno State had 1,356 beds with no students on the waitlist, Cal State Fullerton had 2,198 beds with 502 students on the waitlist, and San Francisco State had 4,339 beds and no students on the waitlist. For the CCC campuses, Orange Coast College had 799 beds with 35 students on the waitlist, and Napa Valley College had 580 beds with 0 students on the waitlist.

Source:  CSU and CCC annual campus housing data reports, UC campus waitlist and housing occupancy reports.

Note: American River College does not offer campus housing.

Although each campus designs its own student housing application and assignment process (housing application cycle) to assign applicants to available beds, we observed some general trends that apply to all campuses. For example, a campus’s housing application cycle takes place over the course of several months. As Figure 5 shows, the housing application cycle typically begins with a student’s submission of an application for campus housing and ends with several possible outcomes, including the student’s acceptance of the campus’s offer of housing. If a campus cannot make a housing offer to an applicant, the campus may add that applicant to its housing waitlist.

Figure 5
Campuses Will Create a Campus Housing Waitlist If They Cannot Initially Offer All Applicants a Bed in Campus Housing

Figure 5 provides a flowchart of the housing application process at various campuses, particularly focusing on what happens when campuses cannot initially offer all applicants a bed in campus housing. The process begins with an incoming student accepting an offer of admission to the campus. The student then completes a housing application. The campus notifies the student of the status of their application, or the student checks the status themselves. The student may receive an offer or may be placed on a waitlist. Students who receive an offer may accept it, reject it, or fail to respond. Students on the waitlist may await an offer, remove themselves, or be removed by the campus if they do not respond to an offer.

Source: Campus housing websites and interviews with campus housing officials.

* Campus officials indicated that Orange Coast College maintains a year-round application process, and Napa Valley College allows students to submit a housing application before registering for courses.

^† Some campuses—including the three UC campuses we reviewed—offer housing guarantees to incoming undergraduates. To accommodate these students with an offer of housing, campuses will often set aside a predetermined number of beds. Campuses place students with housing guarantees on campus housing waitlists only if the students declined an initial offer or missed a deadline.

The housing application cycles at the campuses of each of the individual systems share other similarities. For example, each of the three UC campuses we reviewed—UCLA, UC San Diego, and UC Santa Cruz—offers a housing guarantee for incoming undergraduates, although the length of this guarantee varies depending on the campus, and students must meet certain conditions, such as adhering to application, contract, and enrollment deadlines. In contrast, two of the CSU campuses we reviewed—Cal State Fullerton and Fresno State—did not offer students a housing guarantee but instead generally used a first-come, first-served approach when assigning students to available beds.

The total number of students on a campus’s waitlist will generally decline as a housing application cycle progresses for varied reasons, including that campuses offer housing to those students as beds become available. As Figure 6 shows, the total number of undergraduate students on UC San Diego’s Fall 2024 student housing waitlist began to decrease starting in late August. Based on the documentation UC San Diego provided, we determined that 358 waitlisted students, or about 22 percent, accepted a housing offer from the campus. The remaining students on the waitlist either removed themselves, were removed by the campus because they did not respond when campus staff tried to contact them, were removed by the campus because they did not update their status on the campus waitlist, declined the campus’s housing offer, or never responded to the offer. Consequently, campuses that report waitlist numbers later in their housing application cycle will generally have fewer students on their waitlists. In contrast, campuses that report those numbers earlier in their housing application cycle may have more students on their waitlists. For example, UC San Diego had nearly 1,500 undergraduate students on its waitlist at the end of August 2024, but that number was reduced to just 210 students at the end of September, the day after instruction began.

Figure 6
UC San Diego’s Fall 2024 Undergraduate Housing Waitlist Decreased Over Time

Figure 6 graphs the change in the number of undergraduate students on UC San Diego’s Fall 2024 student housing waitlist over time. The figure shows that waitlist first grows after the campus opens it in July. Then, the total number of students on the waitlist generally decreases as the housing application cycle progresses. The figure highlights key dates and events, such as the opening of the housing application for continuing students in late February, the room selection for continuing students in late April to early May, and the housing application deadline for incoming first-year students in early May. It also notes the opening of the waitlist on July 8, the reporting of waitlist numbers to the UC Office of the President on August 1, and the significant reduction in waitlist numbers by the end of September, after classes began.

Source: UC San Diego waitlist data, UC San Diego housing website, and staff interviews.

Note: UC San Diego offers a two-year housing guarantee for incoming first-year and transfer students who meet all housing deadlines and reside in campus housing beginning the Fall term of their year of admission. Thus, UC San Diego’s housing waitlist comprises students whom the campus’s housing guarantee did not cover, such as an incoming student who missed a deadline, a continuing student who had already lived in campus housing for two years, or a continuing student who voided their guarantee because they lived off campus since enrolling.

A campus may remove from its waitlist students who do not periodically verify their continued interest in campus housing, such as students who do not respond to campus emails requesting that they reply if they wish to remain on the waitlist. As Figure 7 shows, students may also withdraw their applications for campus housing for a variety of reasons, including if the campus does not offer them their preferred room type. Thus, not all the reasons that a student is removed from the waitlist are a result of the campus meeting the demand for housing. Further, housing waitlists do not include those who may want or benefit from campus housing but who do not apply. For all of these reasons, waitlist numbers alone are not a sufficient measure of unmet demand for campus housing.

Figure 7
Students Who Apply for Campus Housing May Choose to Remove Themselves From Consideration for Multiple Reasons

Figure 7 provides examples of the reasons why students might remove themselves from a campus housing waitlist. The figure outlines several scenarios involving different students. For example, Student A removes himself from the waitlist because he wants to secure housing for the academic year as soon as possible and cannot wait for the campus’s response. Student B withdraws her application because the campus’s nine-month lease complicates taking summer courses. Student C only wants to live in campus housing if certain conditions are met, such as having a single-occupancy room, and plans to decline the offer if the campus cannot accommodate his preference. Student D declines an offer for a bed in a residence hall that requires her to purchase a meal plan, as she prefers a campus apartment where she can cook her own meals. Student E, experiencing housing insecurity, finds the campus housing cost-prohibitive and withdraws her application. Student F, after being on the waitlist all summer, declines an offer for a triple-occupancy room as he was hoping for a single roommate. Lastly, Student G, who prefers to live off-campus, removes herself from the waitlist after signing a lease elsewhere. The figure emphasizes that not all removals from the waitlist are due to the campus meeting the demand for housing, and that waitlist numbers alone are not a sufficient measure of unmet demand for campus housing.

Source: Interviews with campus housing officials.

Housing Assistance

Although campus housing is generally considered affordable, students continue to struggle with increasing housing costs, both on- and off-campus, and many students have reported that they covered education and living expenses by using a type of housing assistance their college provided. As Figure 8 shows, the cost of student housing at the campuses we reviewed was generally less than or near 15 percent of annual area median income, which is the eligibility threshold for low-income housing projects funded under the Grant Program. For the purposes of this report, we refer to this type of housing as affordable. However, the California Student Aid Commission (Student Aid) reported in November 2022 that of the 17,000 students throughout the State who responded to its 2021–22 Student Expense and Resource Survey, just 16 percent indicated that they lived in campus housing. Data that colleges and universities report to the National Center for Education Statistics show that off-campus room and board costs increased from academic years 2019–20 to 2023–24 at the UC, CSU, and CCC systems by 22 percent, 21 percent, and 36 percent, respectively.

Figure 8
Campus Housing Costs Were Near or Below 15 Percent of Area Median Income at the Campuses We Reviewed That Offered Housing in Academic Year 2024–25

Figure 8 is a bar chart that provides a comparison of campus housing costs at various universities and colleges in California for the academic year 2024-25. The figure includes data from UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Santa Cruz, Fresno State, Cal State Fullerton, San Francisco State, Napa Valley College, and Orange County College. It shows that the housing costs at these campuses were near or below 15 percent of the area median income for the respective counties where the campuses are located.

Source: Campus reported housing information and the California Housing and Community Development’s (HCD) 2024 State Income Limits memorandum.

Notes: American River College does not offer campus housing.

The housing costs above reflect the cost for housing only as reported by the campuses we reviewed, which differs from the cost of food and housing combined as Appendix C shows. Further, the housing cost is the average cost for all housing types that the campus offers, as opposed to a single-occupancy unit. For the UC campuses that we reviewed, the average housing cost represents the weighted average calculated from the number of students who occupy each room type. For the CSU and CCC campuses that we reviewed, the average housing cost represents the weighted average calculated from the number of beds available in each room type.

To calculate affordability, we used HCD 2024 State Income Limits for the county where the campus is located, although we acknowledge that this is not necessarily representative of a one-person household, and is not reflective of every student’s financial situation. For example, students who receive financial aid or work-study are generally not expected to work more than 20 hours per week. Additionally, a student’s family may not reside in the county in which the student attends a college or university.

Nearly 85 percent of students who responded to Student Aid’s survey indicated that they had applied for financial aid. Generally, the financial aid office at a campus will use an estimated cost of attendance to determine the amount a student is eligible to receive in financial aid—typically composed of grants and student loans. Students can use this financial aid to cover the cost of attendance, including housing costs. Students also reported using private scholarships; grants, such as the Pell Grant and the Cal Grant; and institutional grants to cover their education and living expenses. Nevertheless, more than 61 percent of the students who responded to Student Aid’s survey reported using their own income or savings to cover their education and living expenses during academic year 2021–22. Moreover, 21 percent of students reported that they used campus-provided emergency grants to cover expenses during the same period.

The Legislature enacted statutes to expand access to campus-based support services with the goal of addressing student housing insecurity and providing for students’ other basic needs, such as food, housing, mental health, and financial needs. As we previously described, the State’s housing shortage has affected residents throughout the State, including college students. In fact, more than half of the students who responded to a May 2023 Student Aid Food and Housing Survey reported experiencing housing insecurity. Beginning in fiscal year 2019–20, the Legislature appropriated funding to the systems for partnerships and programs aimed at supporting students who are experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity. More recently, the Legislature added statutes that require each CSU and CCC campus and request each UC campus to establish a basic needs center. These centers are intended to provide a single point of contact for students seeking support.

The nine campuses we reviewed offer various types of housing assistance services, as Table 1 shows. For example, UC San Diego and UC Santa Cruz each offer an array of services for students in need, including emergency campus housing and off-campus housing, short-term emergency loans, and case management support. In contrast, Napa Valley College offers fewer housing assistance services. Campuses also partner with community-based organizations (CBOs) to provide services to supplement the housing assistance campuses offer students in need. For example, in academic year 2024–25, San Francisco State partnered with a local CBO to administer rental and utility assistance services. According to the interim director of basic needs at San Francisco State, partnering with the CBO allows this funding to be paid directly to landlords and utility providers instead of to the students, thus avoiding potential negative affects to the students’ future financial aid.

Higher Education Student Housing Grant Program

High construction and land costs are a significant barrier to building more campus housing, especially given that housing projects must be able to cover their operating costs and any associated debt service costs, while remaining affordable for students. To address this barrier, the State established the Grant Program in 2021, with the objective to provide affordable, low-cost housing options for students enrolled in the three systems of higher education. The Grant Program creates opportunities for UC, CSU, and CCC campuses to propose and apply for state support for the construction of housing projects or for the acquisition and renovation of housing projects that would provide affordable, low-cost housing options for students. In addition to other limitations, campus housing developments for students with low incomes are subject to rent restrictions under the Grant Program statute.

As of June 2025, the Legislature had amended the Grant Program six times. For example, the program initially required campuses to submit applications to the Department of Finance, which would then provide the Legislature with information on submitted proposals and a list of projects proposed for inclusion in the budget. After June 30, 2022, the program required campuses to submit their applications to their respective system office, which then ranked housing projects and provided information about them to the Legislature. As Table 2 shows, the Legislature also changed the ranking criteria after the initial round of applications for the Grant Program.

The Legislature approved nearly 40 projects for funding under the Grant Program. When it created the Grant Program, the Legislature appropriated $500 million for it in fiscal year 2021–22 and expressed its intent to appropriate an additional $750 million for it in fiscal year 2022–23. In addition, the Legislature subsequently changed the way projects are funded, as we describe later. As Table 3 shows, most of the approved Grant Program projects have not completed construction.

Audit Results

• The State’s Public Higher Education Systems Do Not Have Sufficient Processes to Identify Student Housing Needs
• Changes to the Grant Program and Limited Monitoring Threaten Campuses’ Ability to Offer Students Low-Income Housing
• Students and Their Families May Have Difficulty Understanding Education Costs and the Availability of Housing Assistance

The State’s Public Higher Education Systems Do Not Have Sufficient Processes to Identify Student Housing Needs

Key Points

• Although the State has generally regarded meeting student housing needs as the responsibility of individual campuses, legislative actions have requested or directed the University of California (UC) Office of the President, the California State University (CSU) Office of the Chancellor, and the California Community Colleges (CCC) Chancellor’s Office to undertake oversight roles in gathering information, allocating funds, and administering grant applications to address student housing needs. However, the three system offices have not assumed a strategic leadership role in planning for housing across their respective systems.
• The UC, CSU, and CCC systems have not fully assessed the extent of their unmet demand for campus housing, relying largely on incomplete measures such as waitlist data that understate the true scope of their students’ housing needs. Establishing a process to regularly assess systemwide unmet demand for campus housing would better position the systems to support campus planning efforts and provide the State with more reliable information about where campus housing is most needed.
• The CSU Office of the Chancellor’s approach to developing its statutorily required student housing plan has understated unmet demand and limited the plan’s utility for statewide planning. Specifically, the CSU Office of the Chancellor developed its student housing plan by relying on information its campuses provided that was not always current or complete. The housing plan also omitted potential market demand for new beds at 12 campuses that did not report market demand or waitlist data.
• The State’s recent efforts to expand affordable student housing highlights the potential benefits of increased collaboration between the systems. In particular, UC and CSU could share their institutional knowledge with CCC campuses that may initially face challenges establishing student housing programs. Moreover, intersegmental housing projects provide financial and geographical benefits and may result in better student outcomes. However, the systems have not prioritized identifying additional opportunities for these types of projects.

Responsibility for Student Housing Remains Decentralized Across the Systems

Student housing needs can be met by reducing housing costs, providing direct housing assistance to students, and by increasing the overall supply of campus housing. Historically, the State has generally regarded meeting student housing needs as the responsibility of individual campuses. However, as the text box shows, recent legislative actions requested or directed the system offices—the UC Office of the President, the CSU Office of the Chancellor, and the CCC Chancellor’s Office to undertake oversight roles in gathering information, allocating funds, and administering Grant Program applications related to student housing. One of the most significant examples of the Legislature increasing the involvement of the three systems to ensure that their campuses address their students’ housing needs was the creation of the Higher Education Student Housing Grant Program (Grant Program) in 2021. The Grant Program required the system offices to rank their respective campuses’ grant applications, oversee approved projects, and report on the status and public benefit derived from their projects. However, none of these statutes require the systems to increase the amount of campus housing to accommodate a specific number of students.

The Joint Legislative Audit Committee (Audit Committee) directed our office, as part of this audit, to determine what the system offices are doing to increase the amount of affordable housing available to students, including whether they engage in centralized planning and provide oversight or guidance to their campuses. In fact, the Government Accountability Office’s Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government (Green Book) establishes a framework that suggests the three system offices should be responsible for ensuring that their campuses effectively address the State’s higher education goals of increasing access and improving affordability, especially with regard to the provision of student housing. Specifically, the Green Book states that an effective system of internal control increases the likelihood that an entity will achieve its objectives. It further explains that an oversight body is responsible for an entity’s strategic direction and accountability.

However, despite the State’s efforts to promote an increase in student housing, the system offices do not direct or conduct any centralized planning efforts to increase the availability of student housing. For example, since 1999, the CSU Office of the Chancellor’s policy has been to delegate the authority to each university president to directly manage the capital outlay process—including for housing projects—from initiation of preliminary funding and project design through construction and occupancy, regardless of funding source. Similarly, the CCC Chancellor’s Office historically has not played a role in planning or expanding student housing, and it only recently became involved in supporting districts with their housing needs in the context of the Grant Program. According to the UC and CSU systems, they are not in a position to direct individual campuses to undertake the construction or acquisition of student housing because they do not offer centralized capital funding for systemwide housing projects. Nevertheless, each system acknowledged that it provides capital project support to campuses as needed. For example, according to the CSU Office of the Chancellor’s assistant vice chancellor of capital planning, design, and construction (assistant vice chancellor), the system has a capital planning group that works with campuses to bring in capital projects as efficiently as possible—such as by reviewing feasibility studies or identifying construction best practices to drive costs down.

Although the UC, CSU, and CCC systems all create and issue capital outlay plans, which are informed by their respective campuses, we found that the UC and CSU plans do not identify how their proposed housing projects would contribute to accommodating the needs of current or projected students. Specifically, state law requires that CSU and requests that UC annually submit to the Legislature five-year capital outlay plans that include an explanation of how each proposed project, including student housing projects, contributes to accommodating the needs associated with current or projected student enrollments. Similarly, the CCC Chancellor’s Office must annually submit to the Legislature a five-year capital outlay plan that identifies the statewide needs and priorities of CCC campuses. However, the CCC Chancellor’s Office’s two most recent plans state that they do not completely represent the unmet capital needs of CCC campuses.

Further, our discussions with the system offices and campuses indicate that the system offices provide limited guidance to their respective campuses to increase the availability of student housing. Officials at each of the campuses we reviewed stated that their system offices do not direct them to increase housing, although some campuses noted that the systems are able to provide information or technical support that can inform campus housing decisions. For example, the senior associate vice chancellor of residential, retail, and supply chain services at UC San Diego explained that the UC Office of the President plays a large role in securing bond funding with below-market interest rates that makes it possible for the campus to achieve its goal of increasing the amount of student housing. Nonetheless, efforts to expand student housing remain the responsibility of individual campuses, with the system offices providing support to them as needed.

Lastly, the three systems do not establish systemwide housing goals; instead the campuses define their own objectives. Officials at each system stated that they do not have concrete goals related to a specific number or percentage of students who they would like to see housed or the number of beds they would like campuses to create. According to the UC Office of the President’s associate vice president of energy and sustainability (associate vice president), the campuses are in the best position to establish their housing goals because they directly manage these programs and understand the needs of their students.

This decentralized approach has resulted in housing goals that vary across the campuses we reviewed. All of the campuses we reviewed have established housing goals, with the exception of American River College, which does not currently offer campus housing. However, only the three UC campuses have established formal goals to increase the amount of affordable student housing. Some campuses developed specific and measurable goals, such as providing housing guarantees for certain student populations. For example, in UCLA’s 2016–2026 Student Housing Master Plan, the campus established four housing goals, including a housing guarantee to all incoming first-year students and new transfer students. According to the chief of staff and director of UCLA’s housing and hospitality administration, the campus achieved its goal in Fall 2022 to guarantee four years of campus housing to all entering first-year students. Officials at UCLA asserted that it is the first UC campus to make and achieve such a commitment.

Other CSU and CCC campuses we reviewed did not have specific goals but had general aspirations—such as expanding access or affordability. For example, Napa Valley College’s goals, shown in the text box, were neither specific nor measurable. Further, the campuses reported varying degrees of success with meeting their housing goals. If the Legislature intends for the systems to assume a stronger leadership role in overseeing and planning student housing to ensure that the systems’ student have adequate affordable housing, the Legislature should clarify this expectation in law and specify the appropriate responsibilities for systemwide oversight.

The Legislature Should Require the Systems to Regularly Assess Their Unmet Demand for Student Housing

Although the systems have historically used a decentralized approach to address student housing, there are many ways in which they would benefit by better understanding the extent of their campuses’ student housing needs. Best practices issued by the Government Finance Officers Association state that identifying needs is the first step in prudent capital planning. Scion Advisory Services, one of the largest operators of off-campus student housing globally, has similarly underscored the importance of assessing unmet demand when planning student housing projects. It particularly emphasized the importance of determining the number of students who want or would benefit from campus housing but do not receive it, regardless of whether they apply.

Despite the critical role that unmet demand plays in guiding housing development, each of the systems relies upon its campuses to understand and define their own housing needs rather than establishing a systemwide understanding of demand. For example, the UC Office of the President and the CCC Chancellor’s Office acknowledged that they do not conduct comprehensive assessments of housing demand across their respective systems and are not in the position of directing campuses to construct or acquire new housing. The UC Office of the President associate vice president emphasized the system’s role in providing guidance within a federated system in which each campus leads its own initiatives. The director of student housing at the CCC Chancellor’s Office explained that he has calculated unmet demand for applicants of the Grant Program, but that the purview of his unit has been to oversee the Grant Program’s projects rather than to undertake a larger assessment of unmet demand across the system. Officials from both of these system offices emphasized their role as guiding campus-led projects to fruition, rather than identifying the need for new housing.

In contrast, officials at the CSU Office of the Chancellor asserted that they assessed housing demand across the CSU system in the form of their legislatively mandated student housing plans. Specifically, state law required the CSU to conduct an assessment to determine the projected student housing need by campus, and in September 2022, it issued the required report on this assessment. However, as we explain in the next section, we found that the methods the CSU used may understate unmet demand throughout its system. As a result, this system—like the other two systems—lacks a complete and comparative understanding of where student housing is most needed across their respective campuses.

In part because California’s higher education systems have not established a sufficient process to assess unmet demand, external stakeholders and the systems commonly rely on student housing waitlist data as a proxy for representing unmet demand. Since 2022, state law has required the CSU Office of the Chancellor and the CCC Chancellor’s Office to report annually to the Legislature each campus’s number of students who request student housing, if available, and the number of students on housing waitlists. State law only requests that the UC Office of the President submit such a report.² Legislative committee analyses of AB 2459—the law mandating these reports—explained that because campuses did not routinely provide data on occupancy rates and waitlists for student housing, the Legislature was not aware of whether campuses were meeting student housing needs. These analyses further stated that gathering and using these data would allow for more oversight and assessment of student housing needs across systems and provide students with information with which to make better-informed housing decisions.

However, student housing waitlist numbers are not reliable indicators of unmet demand because the systems each have their own methodology and timing for collecting or reporting them. As we explain in the Introduction, the number of students on a campus’s waitlist will generally decline as the campus progresses through its housing application cycle. Therefore, in the absence of a standard methodology that all systems use, the numbers they collect will be representative of different points in the various housing cycles. These inconsistencies in the timing of the data limit their usefulness for understanding or comparing student housing demand statewide. For example, when the CSU Office of the Chancellor collected student housing information for its Fall 2024 report, campuses provided this information as of the time of the request—September 2024—after the start of the academic year. As we explain in the Introduction, because campuses undergo their housing assignment process before the academic year begins, waitlist data from September may underestimate unmet demand for campus housing. In contrast, the UC Office of the President required semester campuses to report their waitlist numbers as of July 1 and quarter campuses to report their waitlists as of August 1—both roughly two months before the start of their academic terms. In addition, the CCC Chancellor’s Office requested campuses to provide their student housing information before November 2024 but did not specify a point in time that the campuses’ information was meant to represent.

In addition, relying solely on waitlist numbers may understate the full extent of demand for student housing because they do not include students who do not apply for campus housing. For example, students who are interested in campus housing may not apply if they perceive that housing is unavailable, unaffordable, or highly competitive. There is evidence to support the fact that campuses are aware that students’ perception of availability affects whether they apply. Specifically, UC San Diego reported to the UC Office of the President that its Fall 2022 undergraduate waitlist was underreported because continuing students did not apply after they perceived that the campus did not have the capacity to accommodate them.

Additionally, a campus’s unmet demand for housing may not become evident until new housing coincides with an uptick in applicants. UC San Diego’s director of strategic partnerships and housing allocations explained that after the campus opened a new building in its graduate and family housing portfolio in Fall 2017, the number of waitlisted applicants was actually larger despite the property offering 1,350 new beds. This example further demonstrates that the mix of housing options in a campus’s housing portfolio may affect whether a student decides to apply for a bed. For example, campus housing officials acknowledged that if a student prefers a single-occupancy room but perceives such an assignment is unlikely, the student might decide not to apply at all. The associate vice president of housing, dining, and conference services at San Francisco State stated that these perceptions have become more prolific over the past several years, attributing students’ reservations about applying for housing to social media comments about other students’ being waitlisted. Moreover, the California State Student Association authored a statement in April 2025 expressing concern that the existing metrics that campuses use to assess demand for new housing often exclude the students with low incomes and insecure housing who did not apply for campus housing.

Because waitlists reflect only a portion of students who want or need housing, they are not sufficient on their own to assess total unmet demand. Consequently, a more comprehensive process is necessary to more accurately understand and respond to student housing needs. To this end, the systems should establish a process to regularly assess their unmet demand for campus housing. With such a process in place, the systems would be better positioned to support campus planning efforts and provide the State with more reliable information about where campus housing is most needed. Moreover, the systems would be able to hold their campuses accountable for addressing their students’ needs. To calculate a more complete picture of unmet housing demand, including students who do not apply, the systems could consider incorporating a range of metrics such as projected enrollment growth, market demand studies, and information from student surveys, as Figure 9 suggests. For example, the use of surveys can help system and campus officials better understand students’ perspectives about housing needs and availability. In fact, CSU’s 2025 housing plan acknowledged that waitlist numbers alone were insufficient and indicated that a more sophisticated survey tool would help to define unmet demand.

Figure 9
An Assessment of Unmet Demand Should Include a Variety of Helpful Metrics

Figure 9 outlines helpful metrics for assessing unmet demand for student housing, including projected enrollment growth, waitlist numbers, and survey results. Market demand studies and estimates of students who want housing but do not apply should also be considered. The total number of applicants compared to existing housing capacity can highlight the gap between supply and demand. The figure also supports considering the mix of campus housing options available and the types of housing students prefer. Lastly, rental vacancy rates in the county where the campus is located can offer helpful context for the local housing market.

Source: State law, the 2022 CSU Office of the Chancellor’s housing plan, and analysis of campuses’ student housing processes.

However, the campuses we reviewed that offered campus housing prior to Fall 2024 did not use campuswide surveys to inform their understanding of unmet student housing demand by asking focused questions, such as whether students faced difficulties in obtaining housing or would choose to live in campus housing if it were available. Instead, campus housing offices generally surveyed only students who were already living in campus housing about their experiences. Further, only four of the campuses included affordability-related questions—such as asking whether student housing was a good value—and none explicitly asked whether students had difficulty affording housing or had to forgo other necessities to make payments. One campus we reviewed, San Francisco State, conducted a survey that included some students who applied for student housing but later withdrew. Among those respondents, the most common reason for not living in student housing was to save money on rent, although it is unclear from the survey results whether those students ultimately did. Additionally, none of the campuses we reviewed had assessed the number of students who could afford off-campus housing.

The system offices are uniquely situated to assess demand across campuses, identify trends, and inform statewide strategies. By establishing a process to regularly assess their unmet demand, the systems would be better equipped to align future housing efforts with actual student needs and to support campuses and the State in making informed decisions about where to invest in campus housing. Importantly, leaders at all three systems acknowledged that undertaking a state-funded systemwide assessment of unmet demand could help identify where the need for housing is greatest, although they expressed reservations about the ability to act on such information, beyond sharing it with campuses. Further, each campus indicated the need for additional state funding to develop a more robust and regular assessment of unmet demand for student housing. If the State intends for the systems to assume a stronger leadership role in undertaking an assessment of unmet demand, the Legislature should specify this expectation in law.

The CSU Office of the Chancellor Has Not Fully Assessed Its Students’ Housing Needs

Although no system has a comprehensive understanding of its campuses’ unmet demand for student housing, the CSU Office of the Chancellor’s statutorily required student housing plan represents a recent effort to evaluate this demand more fully. Specifically, the Legislature required the CSU Office of the Chancellor and requested the UC Office of the President to each create a plan that outlined how it would meet its projected student housing needs (student housing plan), as the text box describes. In response, the CSU Office of the Chancellor issued its first student housing plan in 2022 and an updated plan in 2025.³ Although CSU acknowledges in its plans that assessing students’ housing needs encompasses more than just unmet demand, the two housing plans represent CSU’s efforts to analyze its students’ housing needs across the system. As a result, CSU estimates in its most recent housing plan that by Fall 2030 nearly 39,000 students will need some form of housing assistance, such as financial aid or housing grants, student services and support programs, or subsidized housing. Of these students, CSU determined that market demand for student housing could support about 15,400 new beds.

However, the CSU Office of the Chancellor’s determination of unmet demand may be understated because its assessment of student housing needs was not thorough. It developed its student housing plan by relying on information its campuses provided that was not always current or complete. For example, to determine its total systemwide demand in its 2022 and 2025 student housing plans, the CSU Office of the Chancellor requested its campuses to provide the results of any existing market demand studies that they had independently conducted or waitlist information. In response, only eight of the system’s 23 campuses provided results of market demand studies to inform the system’s 2025 student housing plan. However, two of those eight studies were conducted in 2018, and two other studies did not indicate the period in which they were conducted.

Although officials at the CSU Office of the Chancellor assert that these studies were recent and sufficient to guide policy, the system had requested its campuses provide any recent market studies that were completed since 2019, suggesting that the studies were or may have been outdated. Moreover, outdated information is problematic for measuring demand. For example, since the COVID-19 pandemic, gross median rent in California has risen, and more students have reported experiencing housing insecurity—increasing from 36 percent of surveyed students in academic year 2018–19 to 53 percent in academic year 2022–23 according to the California Student Aid Commission (Student Aid). These increases suggest that the number of students who might benefit from campus housing has likely also increased since 2020.

Officials at the CSU Office of the Chancellor told us that in addition to the demand studies, they used Fall 2024 waitlist information from four CSU campuses—Fresno State; California State University, Long Beach (Cal State Long Beach); California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona); and California State University, Northridge to estimate market demand.⁴ However, as we previously describe, waitlist numbers may understate the demand for campus housing. For example, the CSU Office of the Chancellor requested Fall 2024 waitlist information from its campuses in late August 2024 but did not specify the date at which they should have recorded their waitlists. According to the CSU Office of the Chancellor’s director of long-term finance, the system did not specify a date because the campuses’ processes vary and the CSU Office of the Chancellor wanted to provide flexibility for campuses to supply the most accurate information. As a result, the CSU Office of the Chancellor used waitlist information the four campuses reported as of September 2024. This date was after or near the start of the Fall term, when their waitlist numbers were likely among their lowest. Using this waitlist information likely resulted in CSU’s 2025 housing plan underreporting demand by roughly 1,100 waitlisted students.

The CSU Office of the Chancellor’s approach to developing its housing plan also omitted potential market demand for new beds at 12 campuses that did not report market demand studies or waitlist data. According to officials at the CSU Office of the Chancellor, these campuses are adequately meeting their demand or have vacant beds in their housing stock. However, two of these campuses—Cal State Monterey Bay and Chico State—reported in September 2024 that they had a combined total of more than 700 students on their waitlists. Further, the CSU Office of the Chancellor reported in its 2025 housing plan that Cal State Monterey Bay and Chico State experienced housing occupancy rates of 98 percent and 99 percent respectively for Fall 2024, suggesting that they may be experiencing or may soon experience unmet demand for housing.

Additionally, campuses with vacancies may still have demand for specific types of units or rental rates that are not available in the existing housing stock. For example, housing officials at UC San Diego observed a significant increase in demand after opening new types of housing. Despite not being in the CSU system, this example illustrates that opening new types of housing may increase demand. When we discussed with officials at the CSU Office of the Chancellor about the system’s exclusive use of available demand studies and waitlist data and why they excluded other considerations to inform its determination of market demand, the assistant vice chancellor stated that CSU believed the underlying data sources were sufficient to perform the analysis in response to the Legislature’s request to identify how CSU’s housing plan could support addressing the degree gap. Nonetheless, the CSU Office of the Chancellor could incorporate other metrics, which Figure 9 describes, to improve its assessment of market demand in the future.

The CSU Office of the Chancellor identified in its 2022 housing plan other potential ways it could improve its overall assessment of student housing needs, but it has not taken action to address those areas. For example, the 2022 housing plan states that better data collection would include clearer information on the number of students in need of housing who have low incomes or are experiencing housing insecurity. Similarly, the system indicated in its 2022 housing plan that a more sophisticated survey tool would be needed to estimate the number of students with low incomes who are not accommodated on campus because the campus lacked capacity or rents were too high. However, in its 2025 housing plan, CSU again used outdated data in these two areas that may have affected its overall assessment of student housing needs.

Lastly, the CSU Office of the Chancellor stated in its 2022 housing plan that it would create a systemwide committee of various staff, including housing, financial aid, and capital planning and construction staff, in an effort to improve its future housing plans. It stated that this committee would examine student needs assessments and research, analyze enrollment trends and graduation data, and evaluate short- and long-term housing demand and affordability studies. However, the CSU Office of the Chancellor did not address this commitment in its 2025 housing plan. When we asked why the system did not form the proposed committee, neither the assistant vice chancellor nor the university planner could provide an explanation. Forming a committee of this nature would enable the CSU Office of the Chancellor to focus on resolving the issues we identified and improving the utility of its student housing plan.

Greater Intersegmental Collaboration Could Expand Student Housing Opportunities and Improve Efficiency

The State’s recent efforts to increase the amount of affordable student housing highlights the potential benefits of more collaboration among the systems, especially between CCC and the other two systems. Grant Program projects that increase the inventory of student housing at the three systems can help them individually foster future enrollment growth and can have a positive influence on their students’ academic experience, financial stability, and overall well-being. However, intersegmental projects that involve a CCC campus partnering with a UC or CSU campus may offer additional benefits. Specifically, CCC campuses with little or no experience in operating campus housing could benefit from the institutional knowledge that UC and CSU campuses have acquired. At the same time, housing students from multiple systems together could help increase transfer rates and close the degree gap.

These benefits may have been the rationale behind the Legislature’s general interest in intersegmental facilities—a required element of the systems’ annual capital plans under statute. In fact, when the Department of Finance made its initial project recommendations to the Legislature in March 2022, those recommendations prioritized support for eligible construction grant applications that reflected an intersegmental housing arrangement. Ultimately, the systems and campuses submitted six intersegmental projects, one of which the Department of Finance determined was ineligible. Of the five eligible intersegmental projects, the Legislature approved the four projects listed in the text box. The fact that the Legislature approved nearly all eligible intersegmental projects further supports legislative interest in intersegmental housing projects.

Institutional knowledge about student housing at UC and CSU could support CCC campuses that may initially face challenges establishing student housing programs. The three systems’ campuses are currently responsible for identifying potential partner campuses at the other systems, identifying and contacting the appropriate officials at those campuses, and initiating intersegmental projects on their own. CCC campuses that do not have existing campus housing, dedicated housing staff, or relationships with nearby UC and CSU campuses may find this type of outreach and planning difficult as they are likely not familiar with many of these steps. For example, according to the Los Rios Community College District executive vice chancellor of finance and administration, American River College considered pursuing an intersegmental opportunity with Sacramento State but did not have a preexisting relationship with that campus that it could leverage when the Grant Program was implemented.

The UC Office of the President, the CSU Office of the Chancellor, and the CCC Chancellor’s Office are in a better position to be aware of geographic dynamics affecting multiple campuses, systemwide housing demand, and available resources. They are also better positioned to share that information with the other system offices to enable more agile and effective project identification. To jointly address unmet need throughout the State, the system offices should be familiar with their own campuses’ housing goals and demand for housing when collaborating with other systems. Increased system-level planning would help the three systems to identify efficient projects that could serve more than one campus.

Intersegmental collaboration may also diversify the possible fiscal and geographic resources the campuses use to support their housing projects. Although state law has long provided the UC Regents and the CSU Board of Trustees with the authority to issue revenue bonds to fund housing projects at their campuses, the governing boards of individual CCC districts have similar authority. In a November 2021 presentation to the Legislature on student housing, the Legislative Analyst’s Office stated that individual housing projects may struggle to cover their operating and debt service costs while remaining affordable for students and that a campus may sometimes use other campus housing facilities to subsidize new housing facilities to help keep rents affordable. The student housing director at the CCC Chancellor’s Office stated that it is beneficial and efficient for systems and campuses to share resources, institutional knowledge, and the cost and risk associated with building housing. Similarly, the CSU Office of the Chancellor’s assistant vice chancellor stated that CSU campuses would benefit from diversifying their projects’ funding sources through partnerships with CCC campuses that may be able to issue local revenue bonds.

Beyond expanded financing opportunities, the UC and CSU campuses, some of which do not have room to build more housing, would benefit from the increased land available at CCC campuses. According to UC Santa Cruz’s associate vice chancellor of colleges, housing, and educational services, the joint project between UC Santa Cruz and Cabrillo Community College will allow UC Santa Cruz to create more housing capacity for its students without the challenges associated with building on its own campus. The associate vice chancellor specifically mentioned geological instability and the local regulatory environment as challenges. Additionally, the project application indicates that the campuses identified the Cabrillo Community College Aptos location as the preferred site because it eliminates the need for land acquisition or related costs, and because it is near a connection point via the Santa Cruz Metro. UC and CSU campuses located in densely populated areas of the State may similarly benefit from available land at nearby CCC campuses.

Moreover, building additional intersegmental student housing projects could improve student success and outcomes. As we discuss in the Introduction, living on campus provides positive academic benefits for students. Further, intersegmental campus housing can provide housing to students who are seeking to transfer from a CCC campus to a four-year school. For example, UC Riverside and Riverside City College are building a joint housing project on UC Riverside’s campus that will provide affordable housing to 652 students at UC Riverside and Riverside City College. As a result, Riverside City College students living in the new building may not need to move if they transfer to UC Riverside.

Further, intersegmental projects provide opportunities for the sharing of institutional knowledge and resources among the State’s public higher education systems. In fact, the CCC Chancellor’s Office’s student housing director stated that Riverside City College and UC Riverside’s chief facilities officers meet regularly to discuss the development of their joint project, resolve project issues, and ensure that the project is built in accordance with the application that they submitted to the Legislature. In relation to that project, he also stated that the college, district, and university administrators frequently work together to resolve issues around housing services, food services, and student access to each other’s academic facilities. He stated that this approach is more efficient than any one campus trying to resolve these issues by itself. Nevertheless, the systems have not prioritized identifying additional opportunities for new intersegmental student housing projects, instead relying on the campuses to identify, initiate, and lead these efforts. Given the benefits that intersegmental projects bring, we see them as an opportunity for the systems to further improve student housing across the State.

Changes to the Grant Program and Limited Monitoring Threaten Campuses’ Ability to Offer Students Low-Income Housing

Key Points

• Progress on some CCC projects has stalled because of significant changes that the State made to the funding structure of the Grant Program. In contrast, the UC and CSU systems generally avoided this problem by issuing systemwide bonds, as directed by the Legislature. Nonetheless, UC and CSU are now reliant on an annual appropriation of funding from the State to enable them to offer the affordable beds that are funded by the Grant Program, and they may need to raise the rents they charge students for the housing the projects provide if the State reduces or eliminates that annual appropriation.
• State law requires the three system offices to oversee their Grant Program projects. Although the UC and CSU could not provide us with a current update on each project, the three systems have established processes to regularly monitor their projects during construction. The Legislature and the three systems should take steps to ensure that monitoring activities occur for the life of the housing facilities funded by the Grant Program, so that these facilities continue to provide low-cost housing for future students.
• The CSU plans to use Grant Program funding on a project it neither applied for nor received approval to pursue. The CSU Office of the Chancellor has asserted that the new project is a better use of Grant Program funding than the project that the Legislature originally approved and that a legislative hearing provided tacit approval to proceed with the project. However, the Legislature did not authorize the project.

Significant Legislative Changes to the Grant Program Have Altered Its Funding Structure and Impeded Progress

The Legislature has made significant changes to the Grant Program since its establishment in 2021 that fundamentally changed the way the systems execute it. In particular, the Legislature changed the way it intends to fund the Grant Program projects it previously approved. In June 2022, the Legislature approved the first round of housing projects and appropriated from the General Fund direct grants totaling $1.4 billion for Grant Program projects at the approved UC, CSU, and CCC campuses. However, spending commitments from the General Fund were shifted to other funds to address a significant budget shortfall in the 2023 budget. In July 2023, the Legislature amended state law to require UC and CSU to return the funding they had previously received from the General Fund back to the State and instead issue systemwide revenue bonds to fund the approved Grant Program projects. At the same time, the Legislature made similar statutory changes that affected CCC campuses with approved Grant Program projects. It amended state law two more times in September 2023 and July 2024, which added further complications.

Some of these statute changes have affected CCC campuses’ ability to start construction on certain projects and may also result in higher total costs for those projects. State law now requires CCC campuses with approved Grant Program projects to return to the State any allocations they received from the General Fund upon their receipt of proceeds from amounts borrowed by the State Public Works Board (Public Works) pursuant to any financing program established to support Grant Program projects, or upon the appropriation of funds related to fulfilling the campus’s obligation to return the allocation it previously received. As a result, the CCC Chancellor’s Office director of student housing confirmed that nine CCC projects approved in the first round still retain their original funding and can retain it until it is replaced with financing through Public Works. The Legislature authorized Public Works to issue revenue bonds, notes, or bond anticipation notes to finance approved Grant Program projects at participating CCC campuses. However, the director of student housing indicated that four CCC projects the Legislature approved in the second round—Cerritos College, College of San Mateo, College of the Redwoods, and San Diego City College—have not received any state funding, thereby delaying those campuses’ delivery of nearly 1,700 total affordable beds.

According to the CCC Chancellor’s Office’s student housing director, when the system learned that the program would be funded by bonds, some CCC campuses chose to start construction immediately with funding that they had available from other sources. In contrast, other CCC campuses elected to wait to begin construction until they received bond funding or interim financing. The student housing director explained that the campuses that elected to wait are now facing higher project costs because of inflation.

The UC and CSU systems did not experience similar types of delays because the Legislature directed UC and CSU to issue their own revenue bonds to fund projects. Nevertheless, this alternate funding method may at some point negatively affect the ability of UC and CSU to continue providing the affordable beds resulting from the projects. To backfill the funding it initially provided from the General Fund, the Legislature increased the operating budgets for the UC and CSU systems in the Budget Act of 2023 by appropriating $33.5 million to support approved UC Grant Program projects and $99.7 million to support CSU infrastructure projects. Although the appropriation to CSU was for the construction of authorized Grant Program projects, it also supported other infrastructure projects that were outside the scope of this audit. According to officials at the UC and CSU systems, the systems are using this increased annual funding for operations to pay the ongoing debt service on the bonds they issued to construct their approved Grant Program projects.

However, these appropriations from the State are not certain to continue in future years. Specifically, the appropriations made in the 2023 budget were for support of the systems’ Grant Program projects and did not specify that they were for debt service or that they would continue until the systems’ debt was paid off. The State made additional allocations to support the Grant Program projects at UC in 2024 and 2025. According to the Department of Finance, the State provided appropriations to CSU in the 2024 and 2025 budgets to support the construction of infrastructure projects, including its Grant Program projects, as part of its annual operating budgets. However, these appropriations are not explicitly called out in statute. If the Legislature reduces future appropriations to UC and CSU, and the systems are unable to cover the full cost of servicing bonds issued for Grant Program projects, campuses may need to raise the rents they charge students for the housing the projects provide.

Requirements for the Systems to Monitor Grant Program Projects After Construction Are Not Sufficient to Ensure That Housing Remains Affordable

The state law that established the Grant Program mandates that the three system offices oversee the approved housing projects. In compliance with this requirement, each of the systems has established a process to regularly monitor projects during construction. However, the statute creating the Grant Program does not prescribe the extent of the oversight the systems must perform. A separate law—the State Leadership Accountability Act—generally requires state agencies to maintain effective systems of internal control to provide reasonable assurance that the agencies will achieve their objectives. That law states that control activities are a component of such a system. Control activities are the actions that management establishes through policies and procedures to achieve objectives. Both the CSU Office of the Chancellor and the CCC Chancellor’s Office are subject to the State Leadership Accountability Act. Although the UC Office of the President is not subject to this statute, it still serves as a best practice for assessing the UC system’s oversight activities.

The CCC Chancellor’s Office has established a process for monitoring Grant Program housing projects at CCC campuses. Specifically, the CCC Chancellor’s Office maintains a detailed record of these housing projects’ statuses. This formal document contains contemporaneous notes of events, meetings, and decisions that have occurred for each project; changes to key metrics such as the project cost, schedule, and projected number of beds; and upcoming action items involving relevant stakeholders.

Officials at the UC Office of the President and CSU Office of the Chancellor indicated that they do not similarly document their monitoring of Grant Program projects. As a result, we relied on these systems’ July 2025 Grant Program reports to identify and assess the status of their Grant Program projects, which we present in Table 3 in the Introduction. Officials at the UC Office of the President and CSU Office of the Chancellor indicated that they maintain contact with their respective campuses about the progress of their Grant Program projects. They stated that they typically become aware of any significant challenges through regular meetings with each campus. Even though officials at the two systems could not provide documentation demonstrating a current update on each project, both systems submitted the statutorily required annual reports on the status of Grant Program projects in June 2023, July 2024, and July 2025.

To ensure that Grant Program projects continue to provide affordable housing options for students in the future, the Legislature and the three systems should take steps to ensure that monitoring activities continue for the life of these projects. State law requires that any project that receives funding through the Grant Program deliver, at minimum, the number of beds for students with low incomes specified in its approved proposal. It further states that the required affordability restrictions apply for the life of the facility. As the text box shows, state law requires systems to report annually to the Legislature on the public benefit of their Grant Program projects for five years following the completion of a project. However, there is a risk that campuses may fail to comply with the program requirements after the five-year post-construction reporting period ends, especially when faced with a loss of institutional knowledge, staff turnover, or budget shortfalls. When we discussed this issue with the three systems, they all stated that they had not required campuses to develop a plan to ensure that existing housing projects remain affordable for the life of the housing facility.

CSU Plans to Use Grant Program Funding on a Project It Neither Applied for nor Received Approval to Pursue

In February 2023, the CSU Office of the Chancellor requested roughly $89 million from the Legislature through the Grant Program to support the construction of Campus Village 3 (Campus Village), a brand new 12-story high-rise at San José State University (San José State) that would provide 1,007 student beds. The Legislature approved this project funding in July 2023. However, as early as October 2023, the CSU Office of the Chancellor and San José State began pursuing a different project, known as Spartan Village on the Paseo (Spartan Village)—an acquisition that it had not formally proposed, ranked, or submitted for approval, as state law requires.

The state law establishing the Grant Program does not provide for the substitution of an authorized project with a project that did not go through the required application and review process.⁵ Nevertheless, the CSU Office of the Chancellor and San José State plan to fund Spartan Village using the $89 million that the Legislature appropriated for the Campus Village project. As Figure 10 shows, Spartan Village differs significantly from Campus Village in terms of the proposed use of grant funds, building size, total number of student beds, and total cost. If it proceeds with the Spartan Village project that has not been authorized by the Legislature under the Grant Program, CSU will be circumventing the program’s application process, which requires legislative review and approval of each proposed use of state funds.

Figure 10
The Campus Village and Spartan Village Housing Projects at San José State Differ Significantly

Figure 10 compares the Campus Village and Spartan Village housing projects at San José State University. The Campus Village project, proposed to construct a new housing facility, would have offered 1,007 beds at a total cost of $334 million, including $89 million from the state. This project has been paused since March 2024. In contrast, the Spartan Village project involves acquiring a private hotel for student housing, providing 657 beds at a total cost of $166 million, with $89 million from the state. The figure highlights significant differences between the projects’ costs and number of beds.

Source: Grant Program application, CSU Office of the Chancellor’s 2024 Grant Program report, San José State’s campus website, and interviews with officials at the CSU Office of the Chancellor.

When we asked officials at the CSU Office of the Chancellor why they intended to redirect funds from the approved Campus Village construction project to the unapproved Spartan Village acquisition, they asserted that the new project was superior for multiple reasons. First, they stated that Spartan Village would deliver more value to the State by providing affordable beds in a much faster timeline for occupancy than Campus Village. Second, they stated that the Spartan Village acquisition project would cost the campus less than constructing the Campus Village housing facility. Third, they stated that Spartan Village would provide the same number of affordable beds as the original project, which is accurate according to the CSU’s 2024 and 2025 Grant Program reports.

However, we identified concerns with several of the officials’ assertions. For example, although San José State opened Spartan Village to students in August 2024, the campus does not plan to administer its affordable bed program at Spartan Village until Fall 2026. This is less than a year before Campus Village’s original proposed construction completion date of June 2027. Further, as Figure 10 shows, Spartan Village will cost $168 million less than the approved Campus Village project, and the State’s investment would be the same even though Spartan Village will provide 350 fewer total beds. As a result, the State’s cost per bed would increase from about $88,500 per bed in Campus Village to nearly $136,000 per bed in Spartan Village, reducing the total cost-effectiveness of its investment.

Most importantly, the CSU Office of the Chancellor never submitted the Spartan Village project through the Grant Program’s application process. This process, among other requirements, mandates applicants to commit to prioritizing students with low incomes and to demonstrate that affordability restrictions will apply for the life of the facility. In the absence of such an application, the CSU Office of the Chancellor has not demonstrated the same formal commitment to students with low incomes or to the long-term affordability that it originally made for the Campus Village project. Moreover, because the system never submitted a grant application for the Spartan Village acquisition, the State did not have an opportunity to officially evaluate any assertions or claims about the project’s benefits. These include officials’ assertions that the new project would reduce environmental impact and, more significantly, that using Grant Program funding to acquire Spartan Village would result in a public benefit—an essential requirement of the application process of the program.

As we previously explain, the Grant Program statute requires systems to submit annual reports to the Legislature on the status of their authorized projects. However, instead of reporting on the authorized Campus Village project, the CSU Office of the Chancellor has reported on the unauthorized Spartan Village project. In both the 2024 and 2025 CSU Grant Program reports, the system communicated about the Spartan Village project at San José State and did not state that the Campus Village project had been paused since at least March 2024. In fact, the reports attributed to Spartan Village metrics that were proposed as part of Campus Village, including cost, funding sources, bed counts, rents, building square footage, and construction completion date.

System officials stated that they disclosed the project changes clearly to the Legislature because the Legislative Analyst’s Office had reported on it, and the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance discussed it during a March 2024 hearing. The CSU officials further explained that they could not identify a mechanism in statute that would allow the system to send an updated application. Consequently, they believe that the March 2024 legislative hearing provided tacit approval to proceed with the Spartan Village project.

However, the agenda for the March 2024 legislative hearing states that the Grant Program was one of six items to be discussed that day. San José State’s project—one of more than 30 projects across the three systems in this program—was only briefly discussed amidst multiple agenda items. In addition, the Education Finance Subcommittee’s meeting agenda incorrectly stated that the total number of beds in the project remained unchanged at 1,007, even though Spartan Village includes 350 fewer beds. It further stated that CSU would complete the project in Fall 2024, even though the campus would not be administering its affordable bed program until Fall 2026.

Even if the legislative committee voiced support for Spartan Village—which it did not—this vocalization would not constitute authorization to use Grant Program funding on the project, and state law requires the system office to report specifically on the status of the project that was authorized. In this case, Spartan Village was neither the subject of a proposal to nor an appropriation by the Legislature. In fact, a representative from the Legislative Analyst’s Office expressed concern while testifying during the same hearing, stating that it was problematic to convert Campus Village from a construction to a lease arrangement and recommending that the project be paused. By not providing updates on the project the Legislature approved and instead reporting on a project the Legislature never authorized, the CSU Office of the Chancellor undermined the oversight mechanisms that the Grant Program was designed to ensure.

As a result of its determination that it could use the Grant Program funding authorized for Campus Village on Spartan Village, the CSU Office of the Chancellor made binding commitments that pose financial risks. Specifically, in May 2025, the CSU Board of Trustees authorized financing for the acquisition of Spartan Village—reinforcing the system’s intent to proceed with the acquisition using Grant Program funds. When we discussed with the CSU Office of the Chancellor the issues associated with using Grant Program funding on Spartan Village, officials indicated that San José State could experience serious financial consequences if it was not able to use state funding to acquire Spartan Village in December 2025.

Nonetheless, San José State’s current lease agreement with the landlord states that it has an opportunity to purchase Spartan Village from December 2025 through November 2026. Before and during this time frame, the CSU Office of the Chancellor could engage in conversations with the Legislature to seek formal authorization to use Grant Program funding on the project. According to the CSU Office of the Chancellor, the monthly rent that San José State owes on the property will significantly increase after the purchase period begins in December 2025. Although we understand why the campus would like to avoid this pressure, it would be a consequence of its decision to move forward with using Grant Program funds on Spartan Village absent legislative approval.

The CSU Office of the Chancellor stated that the campus could not afford to complete the acquisition of Spartan Village without the Grant Program funding that was approved for Campus Village. However, the $166 million total cost to acquire Spartan Village represents a significantly smaller financial burden than the $245 million that San José State originally committed under the Campus Village proposal. Notwithstanding any of these concerns, the CSU Office of the Chancellor did not submit the Spartan Village project through the Grant Program’s application process. Until the Legislature authorizes this project, the CSU Office of the Chancellor should not spend Grant Program funds in December 2025 as it currently plans to do.

Students and Their Families May Have Difficulty Understanding Education Costs and the Availability of Housing Assistance

Key Points

• Although a statutory requirement exists for each CSU campus to separately list certain cost-of-attendance metrics, when we applied this criterion as a best practice to UC and CCC campuses, we found that campuses in all three systems do not always maintain the required cost information on their respective websites. Without such information, prospective students and their families may not have the complete information they need to make informed financial decisions about attending college. The UC Office of the President, CSU Office of the Chancellor, and CCC Chancellor’s Office are in the ideal position to oversee their campuses and ensure that cost information appears on their websites.
• Although the nine campuses we reviewed each offered an array of housing assistance programs to students, most of the campuses’ websites did not provide key information about their housing assistance programs, such as eligibility requirements or how to apply. As a result, students in need may not be aware of the services their campuses provide.

Campus Websites Do Not Always Provide Accurate and Required Housing Information for Students to Make Informed Financial Decisions

Despite UC, CSU, and CCC campuses making available some housing costs and cost‑of‑attendance estimates, we found that campuses did not consistently post this information on their websites. The text box lists two statutory provisions that require or request campuses to post information about the cost to attend a UC, CSU, or CCC campus. Although the second requirement the text box shows does not apply to CCC campuses and is requested—but not required—of UC campuses, we applied this provision to all nine campuses we reviewed as a best practice because it can help prospective students and their families more accurately calculate the cost of attending a UC, CSU, or CCC campus. Both statutory provisions direct campuses to post the cost information on the cost-of-attendance webpage; however, the campuses we reviewed did not always do so. The UC Office of the President, the CSU Office of the Chancellor, and the CCC Chancellor’s Office should ensure that each of their respective campuses provides cost information on its website so that students and their families can make informed financial decisions about attending college.

Three of the eight campuses we reviewed that provided campus housing during academic year 2024–25 did not list separately the cost of campus housing and the cost of meal plans as state law requires. The law requires campuses to provide that detail on all websites that display student costs associated with campus housing. For purposes of this audit, we reviewed the campuses’ housing and cost-of-attendance webpages to determine whether they posted separate housing and meal plan costs. As Table 4 shows, Orange Coast College, Fresno State, San Francisco State, and UCLA clearly identified on their student housing webpages the cost of campus housing and the cost of meal plans as separate amounts. However, Cal State Fullerton, UC San Diego, and UC Santa Cruz did not clearly itemize housing and meal costs on their campus housing webpages.⁶

When we discussed the issue of posting separate housing and meal plan costs with housing staff from each of these three campuses, they stated that the campus preferred to provide students with a single amount that includes both housing and meals, and officials at two of those campuses stated that separating these costs may lead some students to incorrectly believe that the meal plan is optional even though it is required. However, nothing precludes a campus from disclosing the required nature of some costs as long as it still provides the comprehensive cost information that state law requires. For example, UCLA also requires its students who live in campus housing to purchase a meal plan, and its student housing webpage clearly separates the cost of meal plans from housing costs. Moreover, we believe it would be a best practice for each system office to ensure that campuses separate the cost of campus housing and meal plans on the same webpage where they post other cost‑of-attendance information, which we discuss in the following paragraphs. Doing so would provide more comprehensive cost information for prospective students and their families to accurately calculate the cost of attending a UC, CSU, or CCC campus and compare the costs associated with living in campus housing to the costs for living off campus.

Although the campuses we reviewed included separate cost estimates for transportation and books and supplies on their cost-of-attendance webpages, not all of the campuses provided separate cost estimates for food, tuition, or mandatory student fees, as Table 5 shows. For example, only San Francisco State provided a cost estimate for food on its cost-of-attendance webpage. The other campuses we reviewed each combined the costs of food and housing into a single cost category, making it difficult for students and their families to consider each of those costs as they consider different campuses. Similarly, six of the nine campuses we reviewed did not separately provide cost estimates for both tuition and mandatory student fees on their cost-of-attendance webpages. Orange Coast College and Napa Valley College each specified tuition as a separate expense from student fees, and American River College provided the cost of tuition but did not indicate whether there were any required student fees. Even though the law that requires CSU campuses to separate these costs only requests the same of UC campuses and does not apply to CCC campuses, we applied these criteria to them as a best practice. We concluded that discretely presenting the separate costs on a campus’s cost-of-attendance webpage provides prospective students and their families with valuable cost information to help them make informed financial decisions about the costs of attending a UC, CSU, or CCC campus.

State law also requires that each CSU campus post information about the market cost of one- and two-bedroom apartments and of one-person bedrooms in private houses in the areas surrounding the campus where its students commonly reside. However, we found that none of the three CSU campuses we reviewed provided the cost estimates for two-bedroom apartments and one-person bedrooms in private houses, because the CSU Office of the Chancellor provided outdated direction to all of its campuses. Specifically, since at least academic year 2020–21, the CSU Office of the Chancellor has sent a memorandum each year to its campuses directing them to post the market cost of one-bedroom apartments in the area, and we found that the three campuses did make such information available. However, the memorandum did not reference the need for each CSU campus to provide cost estimates for the other types of housing, a provision that the Legislature added when it amended state law in 2019.

When we discussed the requirement to list cost estimates for other types of housing with the CSU Office of the Chancellor, the systemwide director of financial aid programs stated that the system was not aware that the Legislature had amended the law in 2019. After that conversation, the CSU Office of the Chancellor updated its memorandum to campuses in October 2024 to inform them that state law requires them to post information about the market cost of one- and two-bedroom apartments and of one-person bedrooms in private houses in areas surrounding the campus. As of August 2025, Fresno State and San Francisco State had updated their websites to include the cost estimates that were missing, but Cal State Fullerton had not yet done so as of September 2025.

Although state law only requests—and does not require—that UC campuses provide market cost information for specific types of housing, each of the three UC campuses we reviewed included on its cost-of-attendance website a link to a UC Office of the President document that provides these cost estimates for each of its campuses. The statutory requirement to post market housing costs does not apply to CCC campuses, and none of the campuses we reviewed did so, but we believe that it would be a best practice for CCC campuses to provide additional market housing cost information to help prospective students and their families make informed choices about where to attend college.

Notwithstanding the various legal provisions for campuses to provide cost information, the UC Office of the President, the CSU Office of the Chancellor, and the CCC Chancellor’s Office are the ideal administrative entities to monitor whether their respective campuses are following the best practices we described. The UC Office of the President and the CSU Office of the Chancellor do each assist their campuses by providing them annually with cost information and guidance. The UC Office of the President calculates cost estimates and provides them to campuses. However, the associate vice provost for student financial support, whose team provides campuses with the cost estimates, does not review campus websites for compliance with UC policy, state law, and the best practices we discuss. The CSU Office of the Chancellor also annually provides its campuses with information related to the costs of attending CSU campuses, and although it requires campuses to send it their cost-of-attendance estimates, the CSU systemwide director of financial aid programs told us that the CSU Office of the Chancellor does not review the campuses’ websites to ensure compliance with state law. Finally, the CCC Chancellor’s Office dean of educational services and support confirmed that the CCC Chancellor’s Office does not calculate or provide guidance to CCC campuses or districts related to cost-of-attendance estimates and does not review estimates on campus or district websites.

Some Campuses Do Not Provide Their Calculation Methodologies for Cost Estimates on Their Websites

In addition to not consistently providing cost estimates, campuses do not always transparently provide prospective students and their families with the data sources and methodologies they use to calculate their cost estimates. Systems and campuses may use a variety of methods to calculate their cost estimates, such as by conducting periodic surveys of students, reviewing and assessing local housing cost information, or using the cost estimates the California Student Aid Commission (Student Aid) develops from its Student Expenses and Resources Survey (SEARS). Student Aid uses student responses from the SEARS to determine the average expenses for college-related costs.⁷ State law requires each CSU campus to include on its cost‑of‑attendance website a description of the data sources and methods used to estimate the costs of attending a CSU campus. That law only requests that UC campuses also provide this methodological information, and it does not require or request CCC campuses to do the same. Regardless, we believe providing this information is a best practice for all UC, CSU, and CCC campuses, and prospective students and their families would benefit from understanding how those estimated costs were developed so that they can evaluate their college options and effectively plan and budget for their education.

The data sources and methods individual CCC campuses use to estimate the costs of attending college may vary because the CCC Chancellor’s Office does not develop its own cost estimates. Unlike the UC Office of the President and the CSU Office of the Chancellor, the CCC Chancellor’s Office has not developed its own methodology to determine and provide campuses with cost-of-attendance estimates. Instead, it defers to each of its 73 districts—comprising a total of 115 physical campuses—to determine its own method to estimate the costs it provides on its websites. According to the CCC Chancellor’s Office’s dean of educational services and support, the system does not calculate estimates of the costs of attendance, including off-campus housing costs. In May 2020, the CCC Chancellor’s Office issued a memorandum recommending that CCC officials review the SEARS data and that they may use that data partially, wholly, or not at all as the basis for their cost-of-attendance estimates. However, we found that American River College and Orange Coast College did not provide sufficient information on their cost-of-attendance websites to determine how they calculated their cost estimates. Conversely, Napa Valley College indicates on its website that it used cost estimates from Student Aid, which we were able to validate. American River College did not provide on its website the data sources and methods it used to estimate costs of attendance, but we were able to verify that the amounts it provided were also from Student Aid.

Although campuses may adopt Student Aid’s estimates as their own cost-of-attendance estimates, Student Aid’s estimates are an average cost derived from student responses from a statewide survey—including students from all three systems—and may not accurately reflect the actual costs near any one particular campus. For example, the financial aid director at Orange Coast College told us that the college stopped using Student Aid’s statewide average to estimate the cost of off-campus housing in academic year 2023–24 because it did not reflect costs in Orange County. Instead, Orange Coast College uses Bestneighborhood.org to identify the average rent cost for Orange County and posts that cost estimate on its website. Specifically, as the text box shows, the Orange Coast College cost estimate for off-campus housing is nearly $6,000 per year greater than Student Aid’s cost estimate. Without the additional methodological context, a prospective student would not know that the cost estimate represents the average cost across the whole county and may not represent cities near the campus because, according to Bestneighborhood.org, the eastern parts of the county have higher rents, whereas lower rents are often available in central areas of the county. Bestneighborhood.org indicates that the average rent in Costa Mesa—where Orange Coast College resides—is about $18,900 per year. To offer yet another cost estimate, we used fair market rents from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and estimated that the average annual rental cost is $17,817 when limited to only the cost of housing within a five-mile radius around Orange Coast College, which is between the cost the campus posts on its website and Student Aid’s estimate. Although all four cost estimates are valid, and the campus can choose which estimate to post on its website, the different costs resulting from these various methods illustrate the importance of a campus including the data sources and methods on its website for the benefit of prospective students and their families. However, Orange Coast College did not provide information on its website for students to understand how it developed its cost estimates. In contrast, Napa Valley College posted the data source and methods it used to estimate its cost of attendance.

The CSU Office of the Chancellor provides its campuses with cost-of-attendance estimates but does not require its campuses to use those estimates, which resulted in similar outcomes as the three CCC campuses we reviewed. The CSU Office of the Chancellor issues an annual memorandum to its campuses that provides information to help them determine cost estimates. In fact, CSU system officials explained that the system uses survey responses from only students who indicated on Student Aid’s SEARS that they were attending a CSU campus, which results in cost estimates for each cost-of-attendance category that are specific to CSU campuses.⁸ However, the CSU Office of the Chancellor does not require its campuses to use its estimates. Although none of the CSU campuses we reviewed included a description of the data sources and methods they used to calculate cost estimates, we found that Fresno State and Cal State Fullerton posted on their respective websites the cost estimates that the CSU Office of the Chancellor calculated and provided. San Francisco State, on the other hand, posted on its website the statewide average cost-of-attendance estimates that Student Aid creates, which represents the costs that students across all three systems reported that they incurred. The director of the office of student financial aid at San Francisco State explained that the campus compares Student Aid’s estimates to those from the CSU Office of the Chancellor and uses the amounts that the campus believes are best for students. Without this methodological information, students and their families might incorrectly believe that each CSU campus calculated its cost estimates in the same way.

For academic year 2024–25, the comparison San Francisco State performed resulted in it using Student Aid’s estimate for off-campus housing—about $14,700 per year—because it was higher and better reflected the higher cost of living in San Francisco than did the average estimates of about $14,000 per year the CSU Office of the Chancellor provided. These two methods resulted in only a 5 percent cost difference; however, disclosing that these estimates were based on survey results would be valuable for prospective students and their families considering San Francisco State, because survey results may not be indicative of the actual cost in the area and may differ more significantly from local housing data. Although San Francisco State used a valid method for estimating the cost of off-campus housing, we used HUD data to provide additional context about why citing the methods is so important, and we estimated that the average rent cost in a five-mile radius of San Francisco State was about $5,000 per year greater than the cost estimate it posted on its website.

Regardless of how different methods and data sources result in different cost estimates, none of the CSU campuses we reviewed disclosed their methodology on their websites. The missing methodology was in part because the guidance that the CSU Office of the Chancellor provided to its campuses lacked the methodology disclosure requirement. When we asked CSU officials why their campuses did not post the statutorily required information, the CSU Office of the Chancellor’s systemwide director for financial aid programs informed us that the system was not aware of the requirement. After our discussion, the director advised the campuses of the requirement and provided them with a copy of it. As of September 2025, San Francisco State was the only campus among the CSU campuses we reviewed that updated its website to include a description of the data source and methods it used to estimate its cost of attendance, and it also noted that its cost estimates are averages.

The three UC campuses we reviewed also do not provide methodological information on their cost-of-attendance websites but instead provide a link to the UC Office of the President’s website, which describes the data sources and methods it used to calculate the cost estimates for all UC campuses. Since 1999, the UC Office of the President has used a standard methodology to provide students with a reasonable estimate of the cost of attendance, including the cost of off-campus housing, at each of its campuses. The system estimates off-campus housing costs for each of its campuses by combining local area housing cost information from HUD with responses from a systemwide cost-of-attendance survey that it administers every two years. The UC Office of the President develops these cost estimates and requires its campuses to use them. We found that each of the three UC campuses we reviewed posted the system’s estimates for off-campus housing costs on its website accordingly. The UC Office of the President provides an example of a best practice to ensure that each of its campuses disclose consistent cost information that is valuable to students. Although the CSU Office of the Chancellor and the CCC Chancellor’s Office may consider taking a systemwide approach similar to UC’s to ensure that cost information is available to students, the system offices should nonetheless periodically verify that their campuses are disclosing their methodologies on their websites regardless of the approach they take.

Most Campuses’ Websites Lacked Reliable Information About Their Housing Assistance Programs to Assist Students in Need

Students in need may not be aware of the housing assistance programs their campus provides because campuses do not always post key information on their websites about their programs. As we describe in the Introduction, the campuses we reviewed offer a variety of housing assistance services to their students who are in need. State law requires CSU and CCC campuses to establish a basic needs center in a central location on campus where it makes services, resources, and staff available to students. The law also requires CSU and CCC campuses to make available online a document that provides information about their on- and off-campus basic needs services and resources, which should include a description of the services, eligibility requirements, and how to apply. Although the law requests—but does not require—UC campuses to abide by these provisions, we believe that they are best practices for all UC, CSU, and CCC campuses to ensure that students searching their websites are able to find such services.

Officials at the nine campuses that we reviewed indicated that their websites contained descriptions, eligibility requirements, and information about how to apply for each of their housing assistance programs. However, notwithstanding its more limited assistance offerings, Napa Valley College was the only campus that provided these elements on its website. The other eight campuses do not post on their websites all of the same information we expected to see about their housing assistance programs. For example, the associate dean of students, student support programs, at UC Santa Cruz stated that the campus offers temporary housing for eligible students facing emergency situations. However, the campus did not post on its website a description of the program, its eligibility requirements, or how students could apply for assistance. As a result, some students may not be aware that temporary emergency housing even exists at UC Santa Cruz. Similarly, Fresno State offers housing assistance, such as rental subsidies, but it does not describe these services, their eligibility requirements, or how to apply for this assistance on its website. Although the Fresno State basic needs website indicates that students should complete an online assistance form, and it provides contact information for the campus’s basic needs center, it would be even more useful if students had information available online about all resources for food, housing, financial assistance, and other essential needs.

To ensure that students in need can obtain assistance expeditiously, it is important that campuses provide detailed information about available services in a readily accessible manner. When we discussed with campus officials the importance of providing detailed information about housing assistance programs on their websites, most of the campuses acknowledged that their websites could better reflect information about the current offerings for students. For instance, a clinical case manager at Fresno State agreed that posting information about housing assistance programs on the campus’s website could help improve student awareness of such programs. Officials at UC Santa Cruz asserted that they were in the process of posting more information about their housing assistance services and making their online platforms more accessible to students. As of September 2025, UC Santa Cruz, Cal State Fullerton, and Fresno State had all updated their websites to include more information about their housing assistance services. Posting information about available housing assistance services would increase transparency and further allow campuses to accurately determine demand for their housing assistance programs, as students would be able to apply for the specific services they need based on what is currently offered.

Recommendations

Legislature

If it determines that California’s public higher education systems should assume a stronger oversight role over their respective campuses in planning campus housing to ensure their students’ housing needs are met, the Legislature should do the following:

• Clarify state law to declare its intent that the system offices—the UC Office of the President, the CSU Office of the Chancellor, and the CCC Chancellor’s Office—should assume a stronger oversight role in planning campus housing and identify the appropriate responsibilities for systemwide oversight.
• Require the system offices to each develop and implement a process to biennially assess the unmet demand for campus housing across their respective campuses. Specifically, the Legislature could require systems to obtain relevant information through multiple means, such as administering surveys to their students, performing market demand studies, and evaluating existing student housing databases. To the extent additional staff or resources are needed to complete this periodic assessment, the Legislature should consider appropriating funding to the systems for this effort.
• Establish an intersegmental student housing working group composed of representatives from the three system offices. The working group should utilize the systems’ assessment of unmet demand and further analyze systemwide, regional, and campus-specific student housing needs. The Legislature could also direct the working group to develop a statewide plan that identifies opportunities for intersegmental collaboration to build campus housing and that informs future state funding considerations.

To ensure that housing projects funded by the Grant Program comply with the statutory requirements for the life of the Grant Program-funded facilities, the Legislature should amend the Grant Program to require the UC Office of the President, the CSU Office of the Chancellor, and the CCC Chancellor’s Office to report, as part of their capital outlay reporting requirements, on the public benefit provided by their projects—including the number of bedspaces and rents for students with low incomes—for the life of these facilities.

If the Legislature finds that enabling the systems to request changes to their Grant Program projects does not jeopardize the integrity of the Grant Program, it should amend state law to establish a process for the UC Office of the President and the CSU Office of the Chancellor to request and receive authorization for significant changes to authorized Grant Program projects. This process should, at a minimum, require systems to submit revised applications demonstrating that proposed project changes comply with statutory requirements, such as ensuring a long-term commitment to affordability and supporting public benefit.

UC Office of the President, CSU Office of the Chancellor, and CCC Chancellor’s Office

To ensure that their campuses comply with Grant Program requirements to provide the promised affordable beds or rents for the lifetime of the facilities, the UC Office of the President, the CSU Office of the Chancellor, and the CCC Chancellor’s Office should each establish a policy and process by March 2026 to ensure that beds or rents remain affordable for the life of each campus housing project constructed using Grant Program funding.

To ensure that prospective students and their families have access to accurate and reliable information so they can make informed financial decisions about attending college, the UC Office of the President, the CSU Office of the Chancellor, and the CCC Chancellor’s Office should each establish procedures by March 2026 to regularly monitor their respective campuses’ compliance with applicable laws relating to the reporting of cost-of-attendance information, such as the cost of housing and meal plans, and direct campuses to correct any disclosures that are incomplete or inaccurate.

To ensure that students can access accurate information online about the available housing assistance services, the UC Office of the President, the CSU Office of the Chancellor, and the CCC Chancellor’s Office should each develop a policy by March 2026 that requires its respective campuses to post on their websites key information about any active housing assistance programs and to update at the start of each semester or quarter the following elements of that information:

• A description of the housing assistance offering.
• Program eligibility criteria.
• Instructions on how to apply for assistance.

CSU Office of the Chancellor

To ensure that it creates a student housing plan that comprehensively assesses its projected student housing needs by campus, the CSU Office of the Chancellor should establish a systemwide committee by March 2026 that includes campus and system representatives from key departments such as housing, financial aid, and capital planning and construction. This committee should do the following:

• Analyze existing research and student housing information including, but not limited to, enrollment trends and projections, graduation data, and affordability studies to focus system efforts on campuses with the most need for campus housing.
• Develop a more sophisticated survey tool to identify the number of students in need of housing who were not accommodated on campus because the campus lacked capacity or rents were too high.
• Examine the system’s student housing needs assessment in its student housing plan for methodological improvements, including incorporating information from the analyses conducted by the committee.

To comply with the requirements of the Grant Program, the CSU Office of the Chancellor should refrain from spending Grant Program funding on any projects that have not been submitted to or approved by the Legislature, including the Spartan Village project at San José State.

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We conducted this performance audit in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards and under the authority vested in the California State Auditor by Government Code section 8543 et seq. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on the audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Respectfully submitted,

GRANT PARKS
California State Auditor

October 14, 2025

Staff:
Vance Cable, Audit Principal
Nicholas Sinclair, Senior Auditor
Alyssa Centeno
Rachel D’Agui, MA
Taylor Gray, Ph.D.
Parris Lee

Legal Counsel:
Heather Kendrick
Ethan Turner

Appendices

Appendix A

UC, CSU, and CCC Fall Enrollment and the Number and Percentage of Enrolled Students Who Lived in Campus Housing, Academic Years 2019–20 Through 2024–25

The Audit Committee directed our office to determine the number of students enrolled and the number and percentage of students housed by colleges and universities for academic years 2019–20 through 2023–24. Tables A.1, A.2, and A.3 provide this information through academic year 2024–25 for the UC, CSU, and CCC systems, respectively.

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Appendix B

UC, CSU, and CCC Campus Housing Capacity, Academic Years 2019–20 Through
2024–25, and Planned Additional Capacity by Fall 2029

The Audit Committee directed our office to determine the number of additional beds that colleges and universities have provided since academic year 2019–20, and the number that the systems anticipate providing by Fall 2029. Tables B.1, B.2, and B.3 provide campus housing capacity information for academic years 2019–20 through 2024–25 and the planned number of beds identified in the system’s capital plans for UC, CSU, and CCC, respectively.

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Appendix C

Cost of Food and Housing Provided by UC, CSU, and CCC Campuses for Academic Years 2019–20 Through 2024–25

The Audit Committee directed our office to determine the amount that students pay for housing that colleges and universities provide. Tables C.1, C.2, and C.3 provide the average cost of food and housing that a typical undergraduate student who lives in campus housing incurs for the UC, CSU, and CCC, respectively. The information we include are the amounts that the institutions reported to the U.S. Department of Education College Navigator website for academic years 2019–20 through 2024–25.

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Appendix D

Scope and Methodology

The Audit Committee directed the California State Auditor to conduct an audit of the State’s three public systems of higher education—UC, CSU, and CCC—regarding their efforts to provide affordable student housing. Table D lists the objectives that the Audit Committee approved and the methods we used to address them. Unless otherwise stated in the table or elsewhere in the report, statements and conclusions about items selected for review should not be projected to the population.

Assessment of Data Reliability

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, whose standards we are statutorily obligated to follow, requires us to assess the sufficiency and appropriateness of computer-processed information we use to support our findings, conclusions, or recommendations. In performing this audit, we relied on electronic data files that we obtained from systemwide public enrollment dashboards and a federal government housing costs database for the purposes of determining the number of students enrolled at the campuses of the three systems and the amount that students pay for housing that campuses provide. To evaluate these data, we reviewed existing information, interviewed people knowledgeable about the data, performed electronic testing of key elements, and performed limited accuracy testing. As a result of our work, we found the enrollment data to be sufficiently reliable for our purpose and the federal housing cost data to be of undetermined reliability for our purpose. Although this determination may affect the precision of the numbers we present, there is sufficient evidence in total to support our findings, conclusions, and recommendations.

Responses

• California Community Colleges, Chancellor’s Office
• CSU Office of the Chancellor
  • California State Auditor’s Comment on the Response From the CSU Office of the Chancellor
• UC Office of the President
  • California State Auditor’s Comment on the Response From the UC Office of the President

California Community Colleges, Chancellor’s Office

September 19, 2025

Grant Parks, State Auditor
California State Auditor
621 Capitol Mall, Suite 1200
Sacramento, CA 95814

Subject: California Community Colleges Office Written Response – Confidential Draft Audit Report 2024-111

Dear Mr. Parks:

The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office appreciates the opportunity to review the California State Auditor’s confidential draft report (2024-111).  After careful consideration, the Chancellor’s Office has no additional comments on the findings or recommendations at this time.

Sincerely,

Chris Ferguson
Executive Vice Chancellor, Finance and Strategic Initiatives

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CSU Office of the Chancellor

September 19, 2025

Mr. Grant Parks
State Auditor
California State Auditor
621 Capitol Mall, Suite 1200
Sacramento, California 95814

Dear Mr. Parks:

Thank you for the opportunity to review and respond to the draft audit report on Affordable Student Housing. The California State University (CSU) appreciates the thoroughness of the review and generally concurs with the recommendations outlined in the report. ① However, we respectfully disagree with the finding that the Spartan Village Project at San José State University was not authorized.

The CSU consistently ranks among the nation’s best values in higher education, and affordable, university-operated student housing is essential to keeping education accessible. The CSU is committed to expanding affordable housing options through creative solutions within our local communities while being responsible stewards of both state funds and student resources. The Higher Education Student Housing Grant Program has been instrumental in the CSUs ability to provide affordable student beds. Once fully implemented, the grant-funded housing projects will add 3,730 new affordable beds and 1,294 standard-rate beds across the CSU system.

The Spartan Village Project at San José State University exemplifies the CSU’s ability to adapt to unique opportunities in a challenging housing market. This project, both environmentally sustainable and fiscally responsible, enabled the University to enter into a lease/purchase agreement as opposed to engaging in new construction. The CSU followed all the appropriate processes and produced an outcome that was better by multiple metrics as outlined by the Legislature. Specifically, the project:

• Allowed students to move into new housing years sooner than would have been possible through new construction;
• Provides the originally proposed 517 affordable beds at a significantly lower cost per bed;
• Retained existing housing that otherwise would have been removed for new construction; and
• Provided the opportunity to work collaboratively with the local community and helped revitalize a downtown neighborhood adjacent to the campus.

On behalf of the CSU, I extend my appreciation to the audit team for their hard work and engagement throughout the audit process.

Sincerely,

Mildred García, Ed.D.
Chancellor

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California State Auditor’s Comment on the Response From the CSU Office of the Chancellor

To provide clarity and perspective, we are commenting on the response to our audit report from the CSU Office of the Chancellor. The number below corresponds with the number we have placed in the margin of the CSU Office of the Chancellor’s response.

① The CSU Office of the Chancellor disagrees with our finding that the Spartan Village project at San José State was not authorized. Further, the CSU Office of the Chancellor asserts that it followed all the appropriate processes to produce an outcome that was better by multiple metrics. However, as we described previously, state law that established the Grant Program does not provide for the substitution of an authorized project with a project that did not go through the required application and review process. Thus, CSU’s plan to redirect Grant Program funding from the Campus Village project to the Spartan Village project would circumvent the program’s application process.

Additionally, we acknowledge the CSU Office of the Chancellor’s perspective that for multiple reasons it believes the Spartan Village acquisition is a superior project than the authorized Campus Village project. Nevertheless, as we stated previously, the State did not have an opportunity to officially evaluate any assertions or claims about Spartan Village’s benefits because the system never submitted a grant application for that acquisition. Notwithstanding the CSU’s perspective, the Spartan Village project was neither the subject of a proposal to nor an appropriation by the Legislature.

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UC Office of the President

September 23, 2025

Mr. Grant Parks
California State Auditor
621 Capitol Mall, Suite 1200
Sacramento, California 95814

Dear State Auditor Parks:

Thank you for the opportunity to review and respond to the draft audit report on the University of California’s student housing programs. Providing affordable student housing across all ten campuses has been—and remains—a top priority for the University. Since 2011, UC has built 45,000 new student beds, and now houses over 122,000 students—about 41 percent of our total enrollment. We have plans in place to construct an additional 18,000 beds within the next six years.

We accept the report’s recommendations, though we respectfully note that they may have only a limited impact on advancing our housing goals. ① As the report outlines, the high cost of construction remains the most significant barrier to building more campus housing. Our housing projects must be able to cover their operating costs and debt service while remaining affordable for students. As such, the State’s Higher Education Grant program has been tremendously impactful, allowing UC to construct highly affordable housing for over 5,000 of our students with the greatest financial needs.

The report’s recommendations to the Legislature focus on expanding UCOP’s oversight role, improving data collection from the campuses, and enhancing UCOP’s collaboration with the CSU and CCC system offices. ① While we understand these areas of focus, UC’s ability to implement additional housing projects is primarily limited by our finances rather than a lack of centralized leadership or by precisely enumerating the unmet needs.

UC will continue to advocate for additional State financial support through housing grant programs and housing bonds. We stand ready to quickly accelerate our housing programs in line with the State’s investments.

We appreciate your team’s professionalism during the audit process, and we look forward to continuing our work with state leaders and our colleagues with CSU and the CCC to advance our collective student housing goals.

Sincerely,

James B. Milliken

President

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California State Auditor’s Comment on the Response From the UC Office of the President

To provide clarity and perspective, we are commenting on the response to our audit report from the UC Office of the President. The number below corresponds with the number we have placed in the margin of the UC Office of the President’s response.

① The UC Office of the President’s response mischaracterizes our conclusion pertaining to the high cost of construction and downplays the importance of centralized leadership and the identification of unmet needs related to student housing. Although we acknowledge that high construction and land costs are a significant barrier to building more campus housing, we also specify that the State established the Grant Program to explicitly address this barrier. Moreover, we describe that intersegmental collaboration may also diversify the possible fiscal resources the campuses use to support their housing.

Notwithstanding the amount of funding needed to build additional campus housing, the systems could do more to focus their efforts to identify campuses with the greatest need for student housing. As we conveyed previously, the UC Office of the President and the other system offices do not direct or conduct any centralized planning efforts to increase the availability of student housing, despite the State’s efforts to promote such an increase. Moreover, the UC and the other systems rely on their campuses to understand and define their own housing needs, which results in the systems lacking a complete and comparative understanding of where student housing is most needed across their respective campuses. We conclude that the UC system and the other systems would be better positioned to support campus planning efforts and provide the State with more reliable information about where campus housing is most needed if they established processes to regularly assess their unmet demand for campus housing. Doing so would also enable the UC system and the other systems to be able to hold their campuses accountable for addressing their students’ needs.

Footnotes

1. American River College did not offer campus housing, Napa Valley College’s campus housing opened in August 2024 and was only partially occupied, and San Francisco State did not report a waitlist, and its housing was roughly 90 percent occupied. Fresno State did not report having a waitlist, although it reported that its campus housing was 100 percent occupied in Fall 2024. ↩︎
2. Although the UC Office of the President obtains waitlist data from its campuses, it does not report this information to the Legislature. According to the UC Office of the President’s housing project and policy analyst, the system shares the waitlist data upon request, such as in response to media inquiries or requests from legislative offices, and he noted that UC campuses will sometimes reference waitlist totals to demonstrate unmet demand when seeking project approval from the UC Board of Regents or will use them alongside other indicators to inform campus-specific planning and development efforts. ↩︎
3. The associate vice president of energy and sustainability stated that the UC Office of the President did not submit information specific to the statutory request for a student housing plan. The state law that describes the student housing plan does not direct or request the CCC Chancellor’s Office to create a student housing plan. ↩︎
4. These officials indicated that they used both a market demand study and waitlist data to estimate demand for campus housing at Cal State Long Beach. ↩︎
5. As part of the bond program that the Legislature created to replace grant funding, which we discuss earlier, the State Public Works Board can approve reductions to the number of beds for students with low incomes in CCC Grant Program projects. ↩︎
6. After we discussed this finding with housing officials at Cal State Fullerton, UC San Diego, and UC Santa Cruz, the campuses updated their housing costs webpages to list separately the cost of housing and meal plans as of August 2025. ↩︎
7. Because Student Aid does not conduct the SEARS each year, it adjusts average expenses for inflation. At the time of this audit, Student Aid last conducted the SEARS in academic year 2021–22 and adjusted the average expenses using the 2024–25 California Consumer Price Index. ↩︎
8. The CSU Office of the Chancellor anticipates administering its own student survey to calculate expenses starting in academic year 2026–27. ↩︎