UC Santa Cruz student families fight back on 30% rent hike

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (KGO) -- A plan to upgrade housing at UC Santa Cruz has students ready to fight. They say the university is planning to move students with families into a new and more expensive complex.

Aaron Chang showed us around his current home. "My wife is a grad student, I'm not, and so the university knows the incomes of these grad students," Chang said.

They're below-market units for students and faculty. Families who live there will be asked to move to the university's new family complex.

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The catch: residents say their rent will increase by 30%.

Tenants are fighting these plans.

ABC7 met Nate Edenhofer, a teaching assistant, holding his 8-month-old daughter, Meadow.

"What was going through my head was that it's $600 more a month, it's like money coming directly from my paycheck, from the university back into the university," Edenhofer said.

Edenhofer officially found out about the plans in January.

"At an institution like the University of California Santa Cruz, it's the largest landlord in the city. So when the university raises its rental prices, it affects the whole market," Edenhofer said.

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Signs that said "No rent hike for student families" can be seen in windows.

The complex these young families have been living in is old.

"So this is one of the units that maybe two years ago flooded out. You can see the sandbags and it's just been... family had to move and it's just been left like this, you can see all the sandbags and the pipes," Chang said.

Chang told us multiple units at his complex are sitting empty.

"Here are four vacant units in a row, and every single one is a two-bedroom apartment that a family could be living in right now," Chang said.

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The new complex will have nearly 80 fewer units.

Its construction is part of a bigger push the university says will boost student housing by 40% by 2030.

Chang and other tenants will be holding a rally this Wednesday, demanding UC Santa Cruz rescind its rent hike at the new location.

ABC7 News reached out to the university and are waiting to hear back.