“Family Student Housing.”

Most know the residential area exclusively through the Santa Cruz Metro’s automated bus stop announcement. The 199-unit housing community extends from the edge of Porter Meadow down to the east entrance in 42 nondescript beige buildings.

UCSC’s Family Student Housing (FSH) units opened to students with families in 1971 at a rate significantly lower than that of the local market in order to provide affordable housing. Yet, for a community that used to operate at near 90 percent occupancy, FSH has had higher amounts of vacancies in the past few years.

“When we moved in, they had us sign a waiver that we knew there would be hazardous materials like lead and asbestos in the units,” said two-year resident of FSH Raquel Vega. “A lot of our neighbors have mold in their bathrooms.”

For many FSH residents, however, their largest worry stems not from the living conditions, but from affordability.

FSH is no small component of a student with family’s experience at UCSC. For many students, affordable rent here makes a university degree possible.

Illustration by Amanda Alten

Resident and single mother Brynda Zeller commented on the benefits of living at FSH.

“The best part about living here is the community. [My daughter] Alyssa is able to go and play with the neighbors’ kids right across the way,” Zeller said. “I can wake up and take her to preschool. It’s free if you’re income eligible, and most of the residents do qualify.”

Zeller works part-time, but attributes her ability to live at FSH to substantial financial aid.

At $1,407 per month, FSH at UCSC is currently the third most expensive of the UCs after UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco.

In 2009, rent at FSH increased 7.5 percent, followed by substantial residential outcry.

After halting another comparable rent increase, the administration has slowly increased yearly rent in smaller, 3–4 percent amounts since 2009.

Most off-campus housing spaces advertised for college students do not or cannot accommodate a student’s family and children. Those that can are generally more expensive than the FSH units UCSC offers, according to campus provost Alison Galloway.

Former FSH resident Elaine Kinchen, who graduated in 2010,  said shouldering the increases changed her academic plan significantly.

“For me, the rent increases meant taking 25 units per quarter,” Kinchen said. “Still, in the one and a half years I was in school, I graduated with $11,000 in student loans.”

She added that the current cost of rent in a FSH unit would be insurmountable.

“I could not go back to school now if I tried,” Kinchen said. “No family in my situation could.”

In order to lessen the recent hardship many FSH residents face, the administration has extended the rate-saver option, which insulates continuing residents from rent increases, to the community for one year. The housing policy was also amended to allow one non-family member in. In years past, this would have violated contract requirements.

Raquel Vega, a Cabrillo College student, and her partner Luciano Hidalgo, a UCSC undergraduate, are raising their daughter at FSH. Hidalgo works part-time as a tutor, but the family does not have a steady source of income.

“We had to go and apply for social services in order to maintain. It’s pretty much running on financial aid, which is $1,800 per quarter, food stamps, another $100–300 … and the other half is loans,” Hidalgo said. “If it were to go higher, we would be forced to move back home.”

Taking Down the House

The UCSC’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP), confirmed by the Board of Regents in 2006, included plans to demolish and renovate FSH in an effort to increase accessibility and living conditions.

“The low availability and high cost of [off-campus] housing has made it difficult for the campus to attract and retain talented students with families,” according to the LRDP proposal. “It has become increasingly difficult to develop and maintain the desired close-knit campus learning community.”

To address these concerns, a set of goals for the future of FSH were created. Included in the list were objectives to build additional housing units that “are as affordable as feasible.”

A 2008 civil lawsuit agreement required the campus LRDP to provide more on-campus housing for a projected increase in enrollment.

Associate vice chancellor Sue Matthews explained the university’s plan for future FSH development.

“[Right now] we need somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,100 beds to meet our projected growth,” Matthews said. “Our angle is to deliver something as affordable and accessible as possible.”

The project was a complete renovation plan, one where the existing FSH units would be demolished in two phases, and replaced with higher-density units and an expanded childcare facility — effectively doubling the available living space.

Campus provost Galloway said the amount of relief the university can provide is limited. However, she said she is hoping the university will be able to help those who are in “critical condition.”

The plan was met with significant resident concern over raised pricing. Former FSH resident Kinchen said the administration’s “critical condition” criteria needs adjusting.

“To increase rent when people are barely making it by with food stamps … [would be] a little bit ridiculous,” Kinchen said.

In response to resident concern, the administration expressed willingness to work with residents to find an alternative solution that would mitigate immediate impacts. Several campus entities looked for alternatives to the LRDP plan.

One was FSH resident and Ph.D. candidate Orville Canter, who proposed that FSH be turned into a co-operative housing arrangement.

With help from his wife Victoria and others including teaching assistant union president Josh Brahinsky and Graduate Student Association president Erik Green, Canter worked for nearly a year in writing his Affordable Family Student Housing (AFSH) proposal. When he turned in the final draft on March 28, it was also the result of significant communication with the housing department.

Undergraduate Brenda Zeller and her daughter Alyssa inside their home at Family Student Housing. Photo by Nallely Ruiz.

Under Canter’s proposal, he outlined a cooperative housing model wherein FSH would cede from the campus housing syndicate and handle rent, maintenance and community welfare internally.

Currently, one-third of the $3 million annual gross revenue generated by FSH is deposited into a campus-wide syndicated housing fund, partly to pay off the construction debt and maintenance of other housing projects on campus.

The proposal, which mirrored similar student-cooperative housing accommodations at other universities nationwide, was particularly appealing for FSH residents.

“The only people who don’t like this proposal are people who haven’t read it,” FSH resident Hidalgo said.

AFSH projections included significantly reduced rent for FSH residents, full or partial scholarships, free housing for especially needy families, increased energy efficiency and a variety of sustainability infrastructure. The proposal also outlined doubling the pay of FSH maintenance workers without affecting the contracts of union employees.

Canter’s proposal specified a clear intention to continue collaborating with the university in the form of regular reports and open access to the site for the administrators, as well as a five-year “testing” phase to ensure success.

However, when proposal drafters met with campus provost Alison Galloway, associate vice chancellor Sue Mathews and vice chancellor Peggy Delaney with their final draft on March 28, the proposal was declined in favor of the LRDP project.

“We’re pretty disappointed,” Canter said. “When we showed up [with the final draft], it seemed like [the provost] already made up her mind and wasn’t listening to anything we said.”

Campus provost Galloway, who authorizes decisions to renovate FSH, said the proposal was technically impractical.

“I’m pretty open to getting proposals for things we can make work better,” Galloway said. “So I was not going to say, ‘Oh no, you cannot do that’ from the very start because I didn’t know if it was going to be feasible. But the overall prospect of taking and blocking that out of our housing would be very, very difficult.”

Galloway said the proposal’s offered liability protection of FSH was ultimately too risky.

“No matter what happens, the university is the deep pocket, so if anything goes wrong, the liability rests with us,” she said.

Immediately after the meeting, Canter created a Change.org petition titled “Save Family Student Housing,” with a signature goal of 1,000. Currently, over 600 have signed. Openly critical comments from dozens of self-identified students, alumni and allies followed.

Moving forward, the tone of discussion may yet go a different direction.

Erica Ayon is the chair of the Student Labor Action Project, a Student Organization Advising and Resources organization at UCSC. The group has unanimously approved AFSH.

“There’s usually a student committee for new construction,” Ayon said. “With Social Sciences III, there was a student committee — people showed up with building plans, they knew the budget, etc. But this time there really hasn’t been much involvement.”

Hidalgo said he is not sure about how much impact discussion can have at this point.

“I don’t think we can be really clear about being willing to work with the administration because they’re not clear with us,” Hidalgo said. “They say that they’re willing to work but it’s always ‘under these conditions.’”

Students and residents of Family Student Housing gather at the Quarry Plaza for campus provost and executive vice chancellor Alison Galloway’s office hours. Photo by Chelsea McKeown.

Campus provost Galloway said any minor services to FSH buildings would trigger the need for massive repairs.

“The structures themselves need replacing,” Galloway said. “That’s the unavoidable part of it.”

Advertisements currently exist on TAPS buses and the UCSC Housing website to announce the available FSH space. So far, over 60 applications have been submitted, roughly 10 percent, 30 percent and 50 percent of which are from single-parent families, two-parent families and couples, respectively.

“[Canter] had a lot of good ideas, but I think a lot of it was wishful thinking — it just wouldn’t happen, given the way things are set up,” Zeller said. “But I don’t think any perceived risks of having a co-op outweigh the need for affordable FSH.”

Galloway said renovation plans are not finalized.

“The bulldozers are not arriving over the summer,” she said. “But if things change, we may have to push forward.”

Over 40 FSH residents and concerned allies showed up at Galloway’s most recent office hours, held on April 19, creating a small crowd in Quarry Plaza. She stayed to speak to each one personally, although she couldn’t promise anything beyond a conversation.

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

After exhaling deeply, third-year transfer student Tiffany Perez* sits on the sofa of her dimly lit Family Student Housing apartment. Perez gazes intently at her nearly 2-year-old daughter napping on the couch opposite of us.

“My daughter’s father was very abusive, and I was in a very abusive relationship,” Perez said. “That is the reason I moved to Santa Cruz, to get out of the city that he was going to be paroled to.”

Perez came to Santa Cruz for a better life. She expected similar resources to be available here as they were at her former San Diego City College campus. There, she had access to their Child Development Center’s early hours of operation, beginning at 7:30 a.m., and an on-site Cal-Works location.

Cal-Works is a program that provides financial services to low-income families with minor dependents.

The Cal-Works location in Santa Cruz is five and a half miles away from campus near a small residential neighborhood wedged in between Highway 1 and Highway 17. Visitors must have access to a car or bus route 4, Harvey West/Emeline.

Five and a half miles is only an inch on a Google map, but it is more of an obstacle course for a single mother with a pre-toddler at hand.

“I was under the impression the UC system was like [SD City College],” Perez said. “It would be nice if they had something specifically for single moms [at UCSC]. I was disappointed.”

Single mothers find themselves struggling with the lack of services offered on campus, as well as with the structure of the university calendar itself.

For Perez and other single parents, the current arrangement is not good enough. Resources are being cut left and right, leaving single mothers disappointed. The recently proposed cuts to state-funded aid for single parents would jeopardize their efforts to become financially independent and limit their ability to provide for their children.

Picking up where former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger left off, newly elected Gov. Jerry Brown proposed to cut the third stage of Cal-Works, a resource that Perez used to depend on.

This last stage provided services to more than 81,000 children and around 60,000 families during the 2008-2009 fiscal year.

“These cuts will be painful, requiring sacrifice from every sector of the state, but we have no choice,” Brown said when he announced his proposal.

Perez says that these cuts would be detrimental to her financial stability, as Cal-Works covers one third of her total rent at Family Student Housing and almost $400 monthly for groceries.

“I wouldn’t be able to [continue school],” Perez said. “I don’t know what I’d do. I’m stressed on having two jobs already.”

In the midst of all this distress, single parents around the state are limited by the few resources offered in California. UCSC is no exception.

“Financial aid only covers nine of the 12 months you’re here,” Perez said. “I have to figure out how to pay the other three months.”

Full-time UCSC Dining employee Maria de la Cruz* can relate. Her petite frame and youthful-looking face hardly reflect the difficulties life has made her endure. De la Cruz moved to the U.S. from El Salvador in 1999 at the age of 19. For her, the limited resources present an especially significant challenge because she has no family members here to support her. She is solely responsible for her 12-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son.

“In the summer, when we don’t work, it’s very hard for me because it’s nearly three months that [many UCSC Dining workers] are out of jobs,” de la Cruz said in Spanish. “I’m breaking my head trying to figure out what I’m going to do to give my children food, to give them everything they need.”

To keep up with the cost of diapers, baby wipes and PG&E, Tiffany Perez works at the front desk for the Ethnic Resource Center (ERC) and has recently added another job to her load. She is also the head of the front desk for the IT department. After Family Student Housing’s recent $65 monthly rent increase, rent now costs $1,366 for a two-bedroom apartment.

In the past decade, rent at FSH has increased by 62 percent.

“I have to decide between the gas bill and diapers,” Perez said.

No more than a decade ago, the campus had a few more student-parent resources, but many were student-led.

After receiving several automated responses informing me that my messages failed and calling recycled numbers, it was clear to me that many of these resources left with the students that created them.

Single Parents Action Network (SPAN) was a former committee under the UCSC Graduate Student Association (GSA). It dissolved in mid-2002. Until the previous academic school year, GSA maintained a position for the Child Care Advisory Committee, but the organization is having difficulty filling empty seats left behind.

“This year we have a new core of Executive Council members,” said Jeff Sanceri, president of GSA, in an e-mail. “Since the beginning of the school year, we have been trying to address the problem of membership turnover and the revitalization of committees that this necessitates.”

The recently ratified United Auto Workers contract, representing more than 12,000 Academic Student Employees (ASEs) such as readers, tutors and TAs, has a clause dedicated to child care. Now, according to the UAW Local 2865 website, funding for child care will almost triple. The site contract states that “the total annual amount of child care expenses an ASE may be reimbursed for (from $900 to $2400 a year).” The program will also continue into the summer terms.

Currently, on-campus resources specifically for parents are limited to events held by the Family Student Housing (FSH) community and UCSC’s Child Care Services (EECCS), which according to its website offers “children of UCSC students several child care programs, serving children ranging in age from 14 months to 12 years.” In addition, EECCS sees “parenting education, social events, and family participation” as crucial points to their work.

Exiting the back entrance of EECCS’s playground together, third-year transfer student Sarah Minos* and fourth-year transfer student Michelle Sanders* trail behind their two playful children on the way to their respective homes a few buildings away.

“There’s like a little community they offer for everybody that meets up and hangs out,” Minos said. “This community itself has helped me meet other people.”

Minos is new to the FSH community and added cooking get-togethers, craft parties, Saturday morning brunch, Friday breakfast, and harvest feast as a few of the welcoming community events she has attended.

In addition to social gatherings, parents in FSH collaborate with each other in practical matters, like caring for children during EECCS’s off hours, a bi-weekly food pantry visit and forming carpools to and from their children’s schools.

Though the community provides some support for these single parents, there are several instances when they cannot be there for one another.

“My loop [area within FSH complex] is a little different,” Sanders said. “I have adults with little babies, so nobody really knows each other in my loop, and I don’t make it much to the events either because I have so much work.”

Minos adds that everyone also has different schedules.

“I’m the only one who has a kindergartner,” Minos said. “Nobody’s going to go at 12 p.m. to pick up my kid when they have to pick up their kids at 2 p.m., so that’s really hard. I have a class on Tuesday and Thursday that starts at noon, so I have to have him go to a [Campus Kids Connection] program at school, which I have to pay out of pocket.”

Both Minos and Sanders say they would like a few changes on campus to make their life easier.

“There are so many people, so many parents that are just driving to Westlake [Elementary School] to pick up their kids,” Minos said. “All these people are driving when we could just take one big old bus and pick up the kids. That’ll save on gas. That’ll save on gas emissions that are going in the air.”

Minos gets pulled away by her daughter, who’d been patiently waiting next to Sanders’s son.

“Mommy, Mommy, can I go to the house and get a drink?” she says.

“Yes, we’re going right now,” Minos answers. Her daughter’s face lights up, and she rushes ahead of her mother.

Many single mothers, including Minos, Sanders and Perez, are also in need of additional child care support, since Child Care Services (EECCS) doesn’t offer services for most of December and only operates from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. the rest of the time.

Arriving at the EECCS, third-year transfer student Lea Campton* prepares her daughter’s cereal inside the FSH Coffee House. Had it not been for the attached kitchen, the building would more closely resemble an arts and crafts room at a kindergarten than a coffee house.

Campton also finds herself struggling with EECCS’s hours of operation.

“I just signed up for a class that starts at 8 a.m. for next quarter,” Campton said in early December, over her daughter’s repeated requests for a napkin. “I’m not sure how that’s going to work.”

Perez has the opposite problem. Her major requires her to take a course that is only offered once a year, and it happens to be at night.

“How am I supposed to graduate if there are classes I can’t take?” Perez said.

Despite the need for more services, changes like shuttles to elementary schools and extended hours in Child Care Services (EECCS) are unlikely. EECCS has already been forced to downsize. It no longer extends services to faculty and staff.

While waiting for a recently hired employee outside of the EECCS Infant Center’s green door, Emili Willet, director of Early Education Services, had a chance to comment on this issue.

“People think that because of [faculty and staff removal] Child Care Services is only for students now and there’s more space, but that’s not the case,” Willet said.

EECCS went from having 100 spaces for children to 60 when its budget was reduced in January 2010. Of the original 100 spaces, there were 18 spaces for infants. Space for infants is now limited to 12. Currently, there is a waiting list of about 15 to 20 children, which reached up to 50 children when the children of faculty and staff were accepted.

“Child care is so hard to find in Santa Cruz,” Willet said.

Because of these limitations, dining hall staff members like de la Cruz cannot seek child care on campus.

“Most of the time, you have to leave your kids with someone else,” de la Cruz said. “It’s hard. Even more so in this country. Over there [in El Salvador], it’s the poverty, but you can be with your children. [In the U.S.]I have to pay for my kids to be taken care of.”

In spite of all of her labors, de la Cruz feels she must remain optimistic about her children’s futures, and she dreams of the day they will go to a university — not as workers but as students.

“I tell [my son], ‘The good thing is that, when you’re big, you’re going to help me out’,” de la Cruz said. “I say ‘OK? You’re going to work, and you’re going to help me,’ and he says, ‘¡Sí, mami! I’m going to give you everything.’”

Staring out of a College Eight Dining Hall window, de la Cruz clenches her fist and expresses, in a fit of frustration, her anger at having been left by her children’s fathers.

“I don’t understand why there are men like that, that just leave their children,” de la Cruz said.

Unlike de la Cruz, however, Perez desperately wanted her toddler’s father as far away from them as possible. After four years of difficulties, Perez worked with the district attorney and a detective to sentence her abusive partner to eight years in prison.

“I used it to motivate me and really focus me in what I want to do in my career and achieving my goals,” Perez said. “I want to do prosecution for victims of abuse, which would be child abuse, spouse abuse and elderly abuse. I don’t want to see anyone else fall victim and feel like they’re not being protected.”

Perez is now majoring in politics and minoring in legal studies. She has her eyes on law schools, including Stanford, Berkeley and John F. Kennedy University.

Though funding her own education has been difficult, Perez did not give up. Thanks to the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) and the Smith Renaissance Society she has received the support she needs. EOP serves to promote academic success for disadvantaged student populations, and SRS cites itself on its own website as “California’s first university-based comprehensive path to college admission for foster youths and other independent students.”

“Sometimes, I have to believe everything will work out, and I was fortunate enough to have everything fall into place,” Perez said. “There are a lot of voices that go unheard. I just cried to the right people.”

~~~~~~

*Names have been changed.
Statements by de la Cruz were translated by the reporter.

Photo by Rosario Serna.

The Students of Color Collective (SOCC) finished a week of hunger strikes, optimistic about the success of their protest. Situating their demonstration at the base of campus, SOCC proved to be an organized and resilient group of concerned students.

Irene Vasquez, a fourth-year Merrill student double majoring in environmental studies and economics, said that the SOCC protest started on May 25 with about 20 hunger strikers. Participation varied from a 24-hour fast to those who are committed to starve until demands are met.

The SOCC was established at the end of April in reaction to the growing concern over budget cuts and their impact on the quality of education available for students of color at UC Santa Cruz, with many programs no longer offered.

“The hunger strikers are bringing attention to our list of demands, including the DREAM Act and the university making campus a safe sanctuary,” Vasquez said.

The DREAM Act provides undocumented students with conditional permanent residency, allowing many to attend college.

Twelve people are still fasting, Vasquez said, surviving on a drink mix of water, cayenne pepper, honey and lemon for energy.

Protesters wore red ties to indicate that they had fasted since Tuesday. Some students wore purple ties on their biceps to indicate their “standing solidarity” and support for those fasting.

By May 28, residents of Family Student Housing (FSH) and the New UC group joined SOCC at the base of campus. The groups participated in a one-day protest, both for their own causes and in solidarity with SOCC. Leaders of the three organizations said that their protests were distinct and autonomous from one another.

Still, delegates from each group were in contact throughout the day. FSH’s agenda to stop rent increases, and the New UC’s desire was to keep administrative processes transparent and the UC system public, were also in SOCC’s list of demands. Each organization offered their support for the others.

“I feel your presence and your energy,” said Martin Garcia, a graduate student and resident of FSH, at the New UC’s May 28 rally. He said this energy sustained him throughout the day as they stood in solidarity with SOCC’s hunger strikers.

“They are putting their bodies on the line,” Garcia said.

Taking medical precautions, many of the strikers physically prepared themselves to carry out the hunger strike. Some strikers maintained restricted diets or practiced fasting for 24 hours the Friday before the start of the protest.

Each person who fasted received emotional preparation as well, said third-year Chelsea Johnson-Long, community studies major and SOCC organizer. SOCC met many times beforehand, she said, to ensure the protesters knew exactly what they volunteered for.

“We have a great check-in buddy system to ensure that the strikers are taking care of themselves,” said SOCC member Vasquez.

Among other demands, SOCC wants the university to hire full-time directors for the American Indian Resource Center (AIRC) and Women’s Center. Vasquez said that she learned of SOCC because Dennis Tibbetts, the AIRC director, retired.

Tibbetts pioneered the establishment of relations between local tribes in the Santa Cruz area and the UC. He renamed conference centers on campus in honor of these tribes, such as the Cervantes and Velasquez rooms.

“[Tibbetts] was vital to native students,” Vasquez said. “He was vital to the program.”

Along with their various demands, the month-old coalition wants the administration to freeze budget cuts over the summer. SOCC fears that without a majority of students being present during summer, the administration will reallocate and reduce funds without student input.

“There’s a definite concern over the summer,” Johnson-Long said.

It is important to keep on protesting and engaging the administration over budget cuts, Martin Garcia said. Student organizations “need to sharpen their axes” with regards to the budget woes of next year.

“We have some big-ass trees to cut down,” he said, referring to the administration. “It doesn’t end here.”

Garcia is not the only one afraid for the future of student involvement and protest over the university’s fiscal crisis. Nora Hochman, an organizer with the Coalition of University Employees Local No. 10, said that the summer poses a problem for student protesters.

“The administration is waiting, holding their breath until we disappear over the summer,” Hochman said at the rally. “Then they can go ahead.”

If students like Johnson-Long, Garcia and Vasquez have anything to say about it, this is only the beginning.

“Our ultimate direction,” Garcia said, “is perhaps a complete [university] rehaul.”