UC Berkeley Offers Freshmen 2-Year Housing Guarantee With New Dorms

UC Berkeley will offer incoming freshmen two years of guaranteed housing next fall, marking a major expansion for the campus that’s long struggled to keep up with accommodations for students.

The university said it will also guarantee a year of campus housing for transfer students, thanks to two new housing projects set to open to students in 2027 and 2028, adding 2,700 beds.

“Two years of guaranteed housing for every incoming first-year student is transformative for our student experience,” Chancellor Rich Lyons said in a press release last week. “It gives students the foundation they need — a place to live, a community to be part of and the stability that supports their well-being, allowing them to fully engage in their education and in the life of this university.”

UC Berkeley has historically had the lowest rate of students in housing of the University of California campuses, hosting just 22% of its undergraduate population a decade ago, compared to an average of 38% systemwide.

The school only began to guarantee housing for freshmen during the 2023-2024 academic year, after a yearslong effort to expand campus housing supply, spearheaded by former Chancellor Carol Christ. One of the projects she helped get off the ground was Heumann House, the university’s 1,100-bed apartment-style housing project set to open next fall.

The development has been controversial on campus and has been decades in the making. It sits on the former site of People’s Park, where students and neighbors fought the university’s efforts to build housing since it acquired the land in the late 1960s.

The university had planned to develop student housing before running out of money. In 1969, residents planted trees and turned it into a park. When the university tried to reclaim the land, it sparked major protests and clashes between local police and park supporters.

For decades, the plot remained mostly undeveloped, serving as a gathering place for students and activists, and a long-standing homeless encampment before a state Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for the university to build. The campus quietly broke ground on its new housing in 2024.

Heumann House, named for disability rights leader Judith Heumann, adds to the campus’s supply of apartment-style housing filled by many transfer students. In 2024, Berkeley opened Anchor House, which features around 800 beds in similar units. Together, the projects bring the campus’s housing capacity to 33% of its student population.

The Bancroft-Fulton Student Housing project, the other new development expected in 2028, will add another 1,600 dorm-style beds.

Junior Ysabela Philip said she’s encouraged to see the campus offering more housing options, but is wary of the rapid expansion.

“We want there to be quality over quantity,” she said.

Philip said most students find it less expensive to live off campus, unless they receive financial aid that they are able to put toward housing expenses. She said she’s worried that the push to be able to house more of the student population could lead the school to put off renovations on older buildings, like her freshman dorm.

“The conditions we were living in the dorms were terrible,” she said. “My heater was broken. I couldn’t have hot water in my shower. There was mold.

“Instead of a two-year housing guarantee, [I] would have preferred to see existing housing being brought up to safer standards and higher standards,” she told KQED.

Berkeley officials say they “are committed to ensuring all of our campus housing options are safe, healthy and supportive spaces.”

The university has also proposed a tower up to 26 stories on the corner of Channing Way and Bowditch Street that would house up to 2,000 more students, and feature a new dining facility and “social and academic spaces.” It’s expected to go before the UC Board of Regents for approval next year.

“By providing stability from the moment students arrive, we can help them focus on what matters most: their academic journey and building connections at Berkeley,” Jo Mackness, associate vice chancellor for Residential and Student Service programs, said.