Authors: Elizabeth Mumm, Zoe Borter, Melanie Mendoza, Armando Razo, Andrew Rojas
Abstract
Our project examines housing insecurity among graduate students at UCSB. Graduate students often rely on fixed stipends from teaching or research positions while housing costs are extremely high. As a result, many graduate students are rent burdened or severely rent burdened, have to deal with overcrowding, or have to live further from campus. This project explores how widespread housing insecurity is among UCSB graduate students. The project also considers structural factors such as limited graduate housing, local zoning regulations, and housing development restrictions that contribute to the shortage of affordable housing in the area. Overall, the project shows the need for greater institutional attention and policy solutions to address graduate student housing insecurity.
Specific Aims
This study uses qualitative research methods (interview video) and quantitative research (standardized research question): How does housing insecurity affect graduate students at UCSB financially, emotionally, and academically?
- Identify basic components of What does housing look like for graduate students?
- Identify needs of the graduate student population and how we can best support them in their endeavors of creating a healthy school, work, life balance
- Provide an alternative solutions for housing in Santa Barbara
Measures & Methods
Measures
Measured housing insecurity by survey data, measured the percentage of graduate students spending more than 30% of their income on housing, measured average rent costs in Isla Vista.
Methods
Qualitative Analysis (Interview + survey-based research) and Quantitative Analysis(Statistic + Data-based research
Sample
Demographics:
“A survey conducted in 2013 found that 8% of UCSB students were without homes at some point in their college career. Since then, the housing crisis in Isla Vista has continued unabated. Despite campus efforts to help its unhoused students, many students have resorted to living in vans and cars or commuting long distances to receive their education”
This quote demonstrates how graduate students are forced to focus on securing stable living conditions as some students experience long distance commuting or as we can see in the image of a UCSB student living in their van (image above). This makes it a barrier for graduate students to succeed in their academic journey as it’s not only about financial hardship but experiencing housing insecurity.
Health (Physical and Mental):
Cost-burdened is defined as when someone spends more than 30% of their income on housing, and severely cost-burdened is when a person spends more than 50% of their income on housing. This can apply to both renters, (their rent being more than 30%/50% of their income) and homeowners (their mortgage being more than 30%/50% of their income).
It affects graduate students in several ways such as the high rent burden of “88% of graduate student respondents” have to spend more of their 30% income to afford the average rent cost of roughly $1,500 which also causes emotional stress/anxiety as securing stable housing impacts their wellbeing. This leads graduate students to end up living in temporary arrangements affecting their academic success as their focus may be second guessing themselves, wondering if it’s worth the sacrifice of living in these conditions, emotionally stressed due to housing insecurity
Results & Conclusions
What Are The Living Conditions In Isla Vista?
- High cost of living in housing Isla Vista
- Commuting challenges noted by students who cannot live close to campus and must commute due to housing costs
- Limited affordable on campus housing for graduate students which forces students to live in expensive or crowded housing
- The housing demand in Isla vista exceeds supply which increases competition for available units and raises rent prices
- High rent burden noted by 88% of graduate student respondent who reported spending more than 30% of their income on housing
Discussion & Conclusion
Some Solutions and Recommendations for Graduate Students would be to increase affordable graduate student housing as we’re not only seeing it through the different data/sources but also from our guest speakers as Nathaniel VerGow mentioned how, “the minimum wage is almost 2.9 times the minimum wage for the city (LA), which is higher than minimum wage for the state (CA) so to be able to afford that, you would need to be earning an average of $48.00 an hour, which is almost three times the minimum wage”. Therefore, we need to prioritize housing designs that consider privacy, accessibility, programs to help students adapt such as improving financial aid programs. Advocating graduate students needs by gathering data and having community housing planning that includes graduate students so landlords and property companies can consider new alternatives for affordable housing and for those students commuting, more parking structures if not some sort of new policies to make it much more accessible to reduce some burden which would require some support from our local government to address these housing challenges for graduate students. Therefore, prioritizing some sort of development of student housing designed for graduate students to address the need of affordability and accessibility, improving supportive programs such as financial aid to manage the cost of high living conditions, including better parking policies to reduce the burden of students commuting by having more access to parking structures that will support graduate students.
Poster
