Exactly where a bed larger than a twin would fit was the question at hand for incoming UCLA graduate student Ariel Robinson, 22, as she checked out her on-campus apartment for the first time.
Her father, Mark, along for support and with a tape measure in hand, figured his daughter's bedroom in a recently opened housing complex at UCLA to be 10 feet by 10 feet.
"It's luxury condo living -- miniaturized," said the University of Pennsylvania graduate, who will start law school this month.
Robinson is among the first to benefit from a flurry of new housing construction at UCLA.
Though much of UCLA's housing stock was built more than 40 years ago, seven new apartment buildings and three residence halls will be opening over the next few years, providing housing for 4,000 students -- the most bed spaces that UCLA will have ever built at one time.
Robinson's new two-bedroom, campus-owned townhouse apartment -- complete with two-toned checkerboard kitchen flooring, built-in appliances, industrial-looking carpeting and view of the Los Angeles National Cemetery -- runs for $1,750 a month, a cost she will split with a roommate. Even though the place was a bit small at about 800 square feet, Robinson said she didn't mind.
"At Penn, the apartments were so old. And we had cockroaches and mice," she explained while unloading a law book, floor lamp and bag filled with toilet paper. "I am happy to be in a place, even if it is small, that is clean and new."
The entire UC system, which will grow to 10 campuses in 2005 with the addition of a campus in Merced, is undergoing the most aggressive acquisition and housing construction effort in the system's history to help alleviate what officials call an extreme shortage of beds.
The number of students enrolled in the University of California system grew by 15% -- about 24,000 students -- from 1998 to 2001. Some 40,800 more are expected by 2010. If UC had its way, they'd all have housing. Throughout the system, 34,000 new beds -- 5,000 of which already have been completed -- will be constructed at an estimated cost to UC of $2 billion.
The decade-long construction campaign is scheduled to be finished by the academic year 2011-12. On Southern California campuses, the goal is to add 4,300 beds at UC Irvine, 1,900 at UC Santa Barbara, 5,900 at UC San Diego and 4,500 at UC Riverside.
To cover construction costs, housing rates on UC campuses are rising and, in some cases, outpacing off-campus rental increases.
