This article was published on June 13, 2022 — almost two years ago. It is being “bumped up” with a new date to bring it up on the “What’s New” page. See also: A clash over housing pits UC Berkeley against its neighbors
Skip to:
Follow the money (or lack of money) in the settlement deal between Berkeley City Council, UC Berkeley
UC Berkeley must review impact of student enrollment increase, judge rules
Did UC Berkeley bring in more students than they’d promised?
That was the core of a lawsuit against the University that went all the way to the California Supreme Court. Upholding lower court rulings, the Supreme Court sided with the neighborhood groups and ordered UC Berkeley to set the number of 2022 incoming students back to 2020-2021 levels. The lawsuit used the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) regulations to show that the increase of students harmed the environments — an unfair use of the CEQA laws, many felt.
The California Supreme Court ruling came on Thursday, March 3. Only 11 days later, Governor Newsom signed a bill that had sped its way through the State legislature — with uncharacteristic rapidity — that effectively reversed the court ruling.
“I’m grateful to the Legislature for moving quickly on this critical issue. It sends a clear signal that California won’t let lawsuits get in the way of the education and dreams of thousands of students, our future leaders and innovators,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said.
The group “Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods” sued the university on the basis that increased enrollment has the net result of increasing the housing shortage and increasing rents for non-student citizens. It’s a powerful argument, and the courts agreed.
So you mean Cal Poly Humboldt can enroll as many students as they want, even if there isn’t housing available for them?
Pretty much the case, yes. And if your rents go up as a result, too bad.
But there’s another lawsuit? About infrastructure ?
This is the lawsuit that may be interesting for Arcata. In the process of courtroom drama in the “big” lawsuit, it came out that the cost to the City of Berkeley for city services directly attributable to the university were about $21 million a year… and that the UC has been paying $1.8. The City of Berkeley quickly inked a new agreement, upping that fee to $4.1 million (and, in the process, giving up their right to sue the university).
“Not enough!” cried “Berkeley Citizens for a Better Plan.” “Make UC a Good Neighbor,” and other neighborhood groups.
Why should Berkeley get paid $4.1 when the cost to them is $17 million more?
And the same question exists here in Arcata.
How much does the university pay the City of Arcata for water and sewer services?
And is the university contributing to the City’s wastewater treatment plant upgrade costs — and expansion costs?
Arcata City staff — will you tell us?
In the media: Articles on the Cal Berkeley situation
Below is an assortment of articles in the media about the two lawsuits. The fate of the first lawsuit is established: The California Supreme Court agreed, and the Governor didn’t like it. The second lawsuit is more interesting. And it hasn’t been settled yet.
In a hurry? Just scan the headlines and you’ll get an idea of what’s going on.
Included are snippets. Click on the links for the whole article.
What’s in red is especially interesting for Arcata.
Two articles in particular — one recent (May 2022) and one from 2007
1. Why hasn’t UC Berkeley built more student housing?
Be sure to read this article. Multiple excerpts are below.
Berkleyside News
By Frances Dinkelspiel May 8, 2022
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2022/05/08/uc-berkeley-student-housing-building
2. As College Grows, a City Is Asking, ‘Who Will Pay?’
Carolyn Marshall Herald-Tribune January 19, 2007
About the growth of UC Santa Cruz — written in 2007.
https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/2007/01/19/as-college-grows-city-is/28523265007/
The following articles are in reverse chronological order — the most recent articles at the top. If you want to follow the thread of how the situation developed, scroll to the bottom and then follow the headlines as you read going upward.
June 2022
Berkeley community reacts to CA Supreme Court ruling on enrollment cap
Berkeley’s News | The Daily Californian
Monday, June 13, 2022
May 2022
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2022/05/08/uc-berkeley-student-housing-building
Why hasn’t UC Berkeley built more student housing?
Berkleyside News
By Frances Dinkelspiel May 8, 2022
For much of Cal’s history, providing housing for students was not a priority. Troubled finances in the last few decades have hobbled Cal’s efforts to catch up.
By only housing 22% of its undergraduates and 9% of its graduate students — the lowest percentage in the UC system — UC Berkeley has guaranteed the spring mad scramble. Cal currently has more than 45,000 students but only 9,875 beds.
The problem is particularly acute now because UC Berkeley’s student enrollment has increased 34% in recent years, while a broader housing crisis has also made it harder to find an affordable place to live anywhere in the Bay Area.
. . . .
In 2013, the university hired Robert Lalanne, an alum, developer and member of the UC Berkeley Foundation Board of Trustees, to serve as the vice-chancellor of real estate. The idea was to streamline how Cal approached building by putting real estate operations under one department instead of scattered throughout the school and to explore using private capital to build new structures.
Lalanne quickly helped Cal form a number of public-private partnerships. In P3s, as they are known, Cal leases out land to private entities that then would raise capital to build or renovate dorms. Public-private partnerships have the benefit of not affecting Cal’s bond capacity. Historic 185-bed Bowles Hall was renovated with a P3 between the Bowles Hall Foundation and developers, Education Realty Trust. No campus funding was used and the project generates more than $500,000 in lease payments annually for the campus, according to Lalanne.
. .
Not everyone thinks P3 partnerships are beneficial to the public. Davarian L. Baldwin, a professor of American Studies at Trinity College and the author of In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities are Plundering our Cities expressed his skepticism at the direction Cal is taking in an April 18 virtual conversation with UC Regent John A. Pérez. “Universities are shaping our cities in ways we have not fully explored,” he later said in an interview with Berkeleyside. Baldwin is concerned in general about how universities have amassed power as they have grown, established police forces with jurisdictions outside campus borders, and taken over private property or city land on which they do not pay taxes. By not building enough student housing, UC Berkeley has forced students into surrounding neighborhoods and that has forced out low-income residents who can’t afford to pay escalating rents or buy expensive houses, he argues. He was particularly critical of UC Berkeley’s decision to tear down a 112-year-old rent-controlled building at 1921 Walnut St. in order to build the privately financed Anchor House. Is the privatization of public land, which happens in P3 partnerships, really beneficial to the broader public which institutions like Cal are set up to serve? Baldwin asked.
. . . .
Cal has also pursued a strategy of working with developers to do what is known as a “master lease” meaning the university leases an entire building and then offers the rooms directly to its students. It then sets up residential advisers and other support amenities usually offered in dorms. UC Berkeley currently has three master leases housing 550 students: at the New Sequoia building at Telegraph and Haste, with beds for 116 students; at Panoramic Berkeley at 2539 Telegraph Ave., with beds for 180 students; and at the Enclave Apartments at 2503 Haste, with beds for 254 students
Master leases allow Cal to take advantage of the nimbleness private developers have.
“UC Berkeley is like an ocean liner … [it] has a lot of constituencies it has to be mindful of. Private developers are more like speed boats.” — Patrick Kennedy
“UC Berkeley is like an ocean liner,” said Patrick Kennedy, who leases out all the apartments at Panoramic Berkeley, but not the commercial spaces, to Cal. He has built hundreds of student beds in Berkeley over the last 30 years. “Private developers are more like speed boats. UC Berkeley has a lot of constituencies it has to be mindful of — the professors, the labs, the students, the employees, the Regents, the Legislature and the public. Those are all massive constituencies that have a significant and valid interest in what Cal does on private property. And sometimes, of course, they have different interests. Some professors want lab space, some professors want agricultural space, some groups want parking. We don’t have to deal with any of those issues because we can be focused just on finding property and building housing for students.”
But the city of Berkeley, as part of the $83 million 15-year settlement it negotiated with Cal over its 2021 long-range development plan, has asked the university to stop executing master leases. Cal has agreed.
“The city felt its housing production goals with regard to the non-campus-affiliated population are frustrated when the campus rents entire buildings,” Gibson wrote in an email.
April 2022
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/a-clash-over-housing-pits-uc-berkeley-against-its-neighbors
A Clash Over Housing Pits U.C. Berkeley Against Its Neighbors
Dense cities are better for the environment. Should residents have a say over which parts get dense?
The New Yorker magazine
By Isaac Chotiner April 28, 2022
March 2022
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2022/03/03/uc-berkeley-enrollment-cap-ca-supreme-court
UC Berkeley must cut new enrollment by 3K students after high court ruling
Berkleyside News
By Frances Dinkelspiel
March 3, 2022
Since not all admitted students enroll, Cal will now have to tell 5,000 high school seniors there’s no place for them at Berkeley in the fall.
The California Supreme Court has turned down UC Berkeley’s request to postpone a drastic cap on enrollment for the fall, meaning that Cal will need to cut its incoming class by 3,050 students next year. This means 5,000 fewer high schoolers will be offered admission this month than the university had hoped.
March 2022
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/uc-berkeley-enrollment-dispute-legislative-fix-fast-track/
Gov. Gavin Newsom Signs Law Preventing Enrollment Drop At UC Berkeley After Lawsuit From Neighbors
March 14, 2022
SACRAMENTO (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law on Monday that stops one of the nation’s most prestigious universities from having to turn away thousands of students from its incoming freshman class.
Just 11 days ago, the state Supreme Court ordered the University of California, Berkeley, to reduce its enrollment. The court sided with a neighborhood group that had sued the school, arguing university officials did not consider how adding more students would affect the environment, as a state law requires.
Monday, the California Legislature voted unanimously to change the law, sending a bill to Newsom, who quickly signed it. The new law gives schools more time to comply before a judge can order them to reduce enrollment. It’s retroactive, meaning it reverses the prior court’s ruling.
March 2022
March 3, 2022, 1:13 PM PST
By The Associated Press
High court sides with neighbors over UC-Berkeley, upholds enrollment freeze
In “devastating news,” the prestigious school said will not be able to offer an additional 3,050 seats for incoming freshmen and transfers as planned for this fall.
March 2022
https://capitolweekly.net/ceqa-at-heart-of-supreme-court-decision-on-uc-berkeley/
CEQA at heart of Supreme Court decision on UC Berkeley
Capitol Weekly by
California’s premier environmental protection law was at the core of a fierce dispute between UC Berkeley and its surrounding neighborhoods — and the neighborhoods won.
On Thursday, the state Supreme Court decided in their favor, saying that the university’s plan to build more student housing ran afoul of the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, which requires projects to undergo extensive environmental and legal review before proceeding.
The court’s decision, upholding lower court rulings, requires the school to keep student admissions to 2020 levels.
. . . .
CEQA, the state’s complex, 52-year-old law signed by Gov. Ronald Reagan, has been used frequently to block or force modifications to developments, commercial and residential housing tracts, infrastructure and other projects. CEQA does not directly regulate land use, but it requires projects to meet environmental laws before proceeding.
Neighborhood critics of the school’s plan argued that the increasing number of students on campus are contributing to pollution and are therefore harming the environment — in addition to straining the city’s services.
“We have repeatedly offered to settle our case with UC Berkeley in exchange for a legally binding commitment to build housing before increasing enrollment,” said Phil Bokovoy, President of Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods. “UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz and UC Santa Barbara have all made legally binding agreements with their communities to build housing before increasing enrollment. We don’t understand why UC Berkeley refuses to do the same.”
An Alameda County judge ruled in favor of the community group, requiring the university to freeze enrollment levels until the school provides an updated supplemental environmental impact report (SEIR).
. . . .
“The ruling, if it stands, has the possibility to affect every single public school in California – and even beyond. This is an issue that goes way beyond UC Berkeley if the court order stands,”Mogulof said.
. . . .
State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) argues that the failure to build student housing is “pushing [students] into homelessness and even depriving them of a college education entirely.”
“Students – who are simply trying to go to school and learn – should not be forced to live in their cars because colleges can’t provide enough housing for them. It is unacceptable for NIMBY lawsuits to strip students of their right to a quality education by blocking housing and effectively forcing schools to reduce enrollment,” he said.
Are there greater implications at play?
Yes, says Attorney Jennifer Hernandez, a member of pro-economic development Bay Area Council.
“No one should be surprised” at the opposition to CEQA, because “CEQA has long been used to block funding or expansions of infrastructure needs for California’s population.” For example, she added, the Bay Area population has nearly doubled since 1970, yet the number of lanes on the highway remain the same.
“The pattern of using CEQA to block housing in whiter, wealthier neighborhoods is red lighting and is racially discriminatory. Only by cloaking their actions as “environmentalism” can Californians pretend to have progressive motives in protecting the CEQA status quo,” she said.
Noting that CEQA had been used before to block infrastructure progress in California, former Gov. Jerry Brown was sharply critical of the law in his exit interview with CapRadio.
“So in the CEQA arena, you have two very powerful forces: building trades and environmentalists, “ remarking that “those two forces are going to block any particular change.”
March 2022
https://www.ocregister.com/2022/03/16/berkeley-case-proves-ceqa-needs-to-be-reformed/
Berkeley case proves CEQA needs to be reformed
The Orange County Register March 16, 2022
Nothing could be more racially discriminating than CEQA’s track record of redlining.
February 2022
https://www.city-journal.org/anti-development-lawsuit-targeting-uc-berkeley
Not in Our Backyard
An anti-development lawsuit targeting UC–Berkeley exposes the absurdity of California’s environmental laws.
City Journal
Connor Harris February 21, 2022
Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods is hardly unique in its desire to make an omelet without breaking eggs—or, rather, to enjoy life in a college town without the indignity of living near college students. Anti-student provisions are common in college towns’ zoning codes: State College, Pennsylvania (home of Pennsylvania State University), to take one example among many, requires students in most residential districts to live in houses spaced several hundred feet apart from one another.
August 2021
Labor, community groups file lawsuits to stop Cal ‘gobbling up Berkeley’
Berkleyside News
By Frances Dinkelspiel
Aug. 23, 2021
UC Berkeley did not do an adequate analysis of the impacts of its growth on the community, the suits contend.
August 2021
Follow the money (or lack of money) in the settlement deal between Berkeley City Council, UC Berkeley
The Daily Californian Op-Eds Friday, August 20, 2021
By Leila Moncharsh
Leila Moncharsh is an attorney who represents Berkeley Citizens for a Better Plan, a group that opposes UC Berkeley’s 2021 Long Range Development Plan.
What did [Berkeley Mayor] Arreguín get in exchange for this concession? Not much. UC Berkeley promised to increase its voluntary contribution payments from about $1.8 million per year to $4.1 million per year, but that amount is still only a small fraction of the roughly $21 million per year city officials have estimated UC Berkeley costs the city in services and infrastructure charges. That $17 million gap will only get wider once UC Berkeley begins its planned expansion set out in its Long Range Development Plan approved by the UC Board of Regents in July, which the city agreed not to oppose in the settlement.
What’s worse, unlike taxes, which go into the general fund, UC Berkeley’s promised contribution payment is restricted and will be used on services and projects that largely benefit the campus, such as “wildfire risk management and fuel reduction on UC owned property” and improvements near the campus where the university owns property. The settlement also gives UC Berkeley some spending oversight, and if the campus does not like how the city spends its funds, it can stop paying.
The biggest problem with the settlement is its unequal enforceability. UC Berkeley gets the benefit of the bargain up front — all city lawsuits are dismissed and an enforceable bar to future lawsuits by the city challenging its development plans is implemented — while the mayor and City Council get an all-but-unenforceable promise to pay. This bar on future lawsuits is fully enforceable against the city even if UC Berkeley stops paying the $4.1 million, increases undergraduate enrollment to an extraordinary number and/or builds 30-story towers on Clark Kerr Campus, just to name a few possibilities. By giving up its ability to challenge UC Berkeley’s expansion plans in court rather than setting conditions on that bar depending on the campus’s performance under the agreement, the city gave UC Berkeley little incentive to comply. Why in the world would the City Council agree to that?
July 2021
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2021/07/13/uc-berkeley-student-enrollment-increase-ceqa
UC Berkeley must review impact of student enrollment increase, judge rules
Berkleyside News
By Frances Dinkelspiel July 13, 2021
An Alameda County Superior Court judge has ruled that UC Berkeley abused its discretion when it failed to study the impacts of increasing its student enrollment by 33.7%. — and told the university it must do a more comprehensive review.
While UC Berkeley did follow CEQA properly while analyzing how a new academic and housing project for the Goldman School of Public Policy would impact the environment, its examination of how student growth would impact housing in Berkeley, noise, and uses of city services was “legally insufficient,” Judge Brad Seligman wrote in a decision handed down Friday. UC Berkeley had argued in a supplemental draft environmental impact report that it did not study the impacts of the enrollment increase because it was not a “project” per se like constructing a building.
A June ruling by the California Court of Appeal found otherwise: “CEQA requires public universities to mitigate the environmental impacts of growth and development,” Seligman noted.
July 2021
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2021/07/14/uc-berkeley-payment-settlement-agreement
UC Berkeley will more than double what it pays the city under new settlement agreement
UC Berkeley will now pay the city more than $4 million a year for its use of city services.
Berkleyside News
By Frances Dinkelspiel July 14, 2021
Original story, July 14 UC Berkeley will start paying the city of Berkeley about $4.1 million a year for its use of city services, more than doubling the $1.8 million it paid until recently.
Over the course of the next 16 years, the payments for fire, police, emergency services and the oversight of the health department should top $82.6 million, according to broad terms of an agreement between the two entities.
In exchange, Berkeley will withdraw from two lawsuits it is involved in, one over the university’s 33.7% jump in student enrollment and plans to build a new academic building for the Goldman School of Public Policy (known as the Upper Hearst Project) and one over the development of volleyball courts at the Clark Kerr campus. Berkeley also agreed not to file a lawsuit over the new 2021 long-range plan and environmental impact report UC Berkeley recently prepared.
Berkeley has also agreed not to oppose the Anchor House project, which will add 772 beds but involve the destruction of eight rent-controlled units, or a project for about 1,200 beds planned for People’s Park.
The proposed settlement does not require UC Berkeley to build a specific number of beds for its students nor does it propose an enrollment cap.
July 2021
Neighborhood groups sue to stop Berkeley’s $83M settlement with Cal
Voting in closed session and then not reporting it is a violation of California’s open meeting laws, the groups contend.
Berkleyside News
By Frances Dinkelspiel July 20, 2021
On July 13, the City Council voted 8-1, with Councilmember Kate Harrison dissenting, to enter into an agreement with UC Berkeley. While the details were not made public, the city and university put out a joint press release stating that UC Berkeley would pay $83 million over 16 years for its use of police, fire and emergency services. Other funds will also be forthcoming, but details were scant since the settlement has not been released publicly. In exchange for the payment, Berkeley agreed to withdraw from two lawsuits in which a judge found that Cal had not fully complied with the state’s environmental laws. The city also said it would not challenge UC Berkeley’s new 2021 long-range development plan and draft environmental review.
January 2007
https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/2007/01/19/as-college-grows-city-is/28523265007/
As College Grows, a City Is Asking, ‘Who Will Pay?’
Carolyn Marshall Herald-Tribune January 19, 2007
About the growth of UC Santa Cruz — written in 2007.
Santa Cruz’s appeal has made it into one of the most popular of the University of California’s 10 campuses. But this, in turn, has recently led to a deep rift in the cozy relationship between the college and the city, with accusations of bad faith, voter referendums and nearly a dozen lawsuits pending or in the works.