UC Berkeley’s Affordable Housing Project at People’s Park Finally Has a Developer

UC Berkeley selected nonprofit housing developer Satellite Affordable Housing Associates on Thursday to build a 100-unit permanent supportive housing facility on People’s Park.

The move marks a step forward in a decades-long battle, involving lengthy legal disputes and charged protests between neighbors, activists and university police, over repurposing some of the park’s space, which remains a symbol of political activism at the university.

The development will house people exiting homelessness and those who qualify for low-income housing.

“This project has been in development since 2018, when our former Chancellor, Carol Christ, really took the initiative to create a new vision and future for People’s Park,” UC Berkeley spokesperson Kyle Gibson said. “Through an extensive amount of community engagement and planning, [we] put together a very comprehensive plan to really meet the needs of the community.”

The nonprofit developer will now finalize the project’s plans and will present them to the university in the coming months. The supportive housing project promises to provide residents with on-site services, including case management.

The supportive housing facility will stand next door to an 11-story student dormitory that the university quietly started constructing in July 2024. The dorm, called the Judith E. Heumann House, is expected to provide housing for more than 1,100 undergraduates and is slated to open in the fall of 2027.

The university is also preparing to start construction on another dorm on Bancroft Way, called the Bancroft-Fulton Student Housing project, which would replace an administrative building. It is slated to bring more than 1,600 beds online when it is expected to open in summer 2028.

Gibson said those projects will increase the university’s housing capacity by more than 50% since it launched its student housing initiative in 2018.

The university plans to preserve more than 60% of the green space in People’s Park, Gibson said. UC Berkeley professor and landscape architect Walter Hood is designing the park space, which will commemorate the park’s history.

Some of the ideas Hood’s firm is considering include a memorial walkway mimicking the path protestors walked in May 1969, murals on the outside of buildings and displays of historic photos. The firm is expected to share those plans next year, according to university officials.

Gibson said the permanent supportive housing facility will begin construction only after the student housing and park is completed.

He estimated the project would cost about $55 million to complete. It already has an estimated $31.1 million in earmarked funding from local and state sources. Gibson said the nonprofit developer has started applying for additional cash from county, state and federal funds that support affordable housing projects.

Originally, Berkeley-based developer Resources for Community Development was slated to develop the supportive housing project, but quit shortly after an appellate court ruled the university couldn’t move forward until it evaluated other possible development sites and assessed potential noise impacts to students and other neighbors as part of its environmental review.

At the time, university officials said the project’s legal issues brought costly delays to developers working on it. Months after the appellate court’s decision, the California Supreme Court overturned that decision and cleared the way for construction to start.

“Satellite Affordable Housing Associates is honored to have been selected by UC Berkeley to develop and operate supportive and affordable housing as a key component of the People’s Park housing project,” Susan Friedland, CEO of Satellite Affordable Housing Associates, said in an emailed statement.