The University of California, Berkeley, says it will guarantee two years of on-campus housing to all freshmen, starting with the class entering later this year, a major step for a university that has struggled to provide enough housing for its students.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that a wave of new construction is helping the university provide the housing needed to accommodate more students. A decade ago, Berkeley had the worst housing availability among the nine University of California undergraduate campuses. It had beds for just 22% of its undergrads compared with a 38% average systemwide.
One of the projects under construction, Heumann House, is an 11-story, 1,100-bed apartment style complex on the site of People's Park, set to open in 2027. That will increase the university's housing capacity to 33% of its 33,000 undergrads and enable it to expand its housing guarantee beyond first-year students to include returning sophomores.
The two-year housing guarantee for incoming freshmen hinges on completion of Heumann House, which had been bogged down in a long legal battle. A 2024 state Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for the project to move forward.
The university also has broken ground on a 23-story development of traditional residence hall rooms called Bancroft-Fulton Student Housing. That project, which will be the tallest building in downtown Berkeley, will offer 1,600 beds and is expected to be ready for the fall 2028 semester.
These two major housing projects add to Anchor House, the University of California system's first housing built specifically for transfer students, which opened in 2024 with 800 beds.
Another housing complex, on Channing Way, is working its way through the planning process and could supply another 2,000 beds and bring the bed-to-student ratio about 44%.
"Living on campus is about far more than proximity to campus — it's about living in a thriving, dynamic community that supports one's growth and development," said Stephen C. Sutton, vice chancellor for student affairs.
