{"id":312658,"date":"2023-09-06T05:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-06T12:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/?p=312658"},"modified":"2023-09-05T23:57:40","modified_gmt":"2023-09-06T06:57:40","slug":"student-housing-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/_ko\/education\/higher-education\/2023\/09\/student-housing-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Legislative fix would save student housing at some California community colleges"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t\n\t\t
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In summary<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\n\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t

A June budget deal required community colleges to raise their own money to build affordable student housing. Some campuses said that plan prevented them from building the dorms, even with help from the state to pay the debt.\n<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\n

Cerritos College in Los Angeles County was about to cancel plans to build affordable dorms for 396 students at rents of just above $700 a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another community college, Sierra College in Rocklin, was planning to abandon construction of homes for 354 students at rents of $450 a month.

Now two<\/a> bills<\/a> are making their way through the Legislature that will allow those projects to continue and reverse a June budget deal that panicked community colleges. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Cerritos, Sierra and 17 other California community colleges were promised $1.1 billion in state cash upfront to construct affordable student housing, state lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom yanked that money in June<\/a> to address California\u2019s then-$31.5 billion budget shortfall<\/a>.

Instead, those community colleges were told to borrow that money using a financial tool known as a revenue bond<\/a>, with the state promising to cover the debt payments for 30 years. But without a concrete guarantee that the state would supply the campuses the $78.5 million annually<\/a> to cover their debt payments, <\/strong>at least two colleges \u2014\u00a0 Cerritos and Sierra \u2014 would have backed out of their plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The community colleges\u2019 departures from the dorm program <\/em>would have undermined a novel state effort<\/a> to house nearly 6,000 community college students in affordable student housing \u2014 and thousands more at the state\u2019s public universities \u2014 at a time when 20% of community college students experience homelessness<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two bills would allow community colleges to keep the money they\u2019ve already gotten and return the cash by early summer next year. In place of those funds, the bill package says the state intends to find the money before that summer deadline so that the community colleges won\u2019t have to, resolving the quagmire. Colleges like the fix.

Both Jose Fierro and Willy Duncan, presidents of Cerritos College and Sierra College, respectively, told CalMatters they would not have built the affordable student housing projects without this change. The bills are expected to pass the Legislature early next week and Newsom will likely sign them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Wasn’t what we applied for\u2019<\/strong>

The June budget change \u201cwasn’t what we applied for and it wasn’t the way the program was laid out to us,\u201d Duncan said. He said he wouldn\u2019t have applied for the program to begin with had it required the campuses to raise the revenue.

<\/strong>Duncan\u2019s case had an additional wrinkle: Sierra College was one of several campuses that received a share of roughly $500 million to start building last year. The roadmap fleshed out in the 2022 budget deal said nearly $500 million more would be awarded to other community colleges in 2023. The June change upended those plans.

<\/strong>\u201cI would have had to say to the state, not only can I not continue with the project, but I spent about $7 million so far of the funds that you’ve given me and I have no means to pay that back,\u201d Duncan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dilemma facing colleges looked like this: Imagine a wealthy relative promising to give you cash to buy a house, and then at the last minute your familial Warbucks<\/a> says, just kidding, \u201cborrow the money and I\u2019ll cover your mortgage payments.\u201d

Sounds fine in theory, unless you struggle to qualify for a loan or that relative decides to not pay one year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would have had to say to the state, not only can I not continue with the project, but I spent about $7 million…of the funds that you’ve given me and I have no means to pay that back.\u201d<\/p>Willy Duncan, president of Sierra College<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The June decision, while a budget saver for California\u2019s coffers, sowed anxiety for California\u2019s community college leaders<\/a> and launched a two-month effort to engineer a legislative solution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’ve been working really hard on this,\u201d said Sen. John Laird, a Democrat from Santa Cruz who has fought to preserve the state affordable student housing program since its inception in 2021.
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\u201cIt’s only in the finance world where you can remove a billion dollars from the budget and say it’s not a cut,\u201d he mused in an interview with CalMatters. Like some of the affected college leaders, the June change surprised him. As recently as May, Newsom was still promising to hand the colleges cash upfront, mostly in line with what was planned in 2022<\/a>.

The fix in the two bills \u201cwas hard to tie down over two months,\u201d Laird said, who worked with community college presidents, the community college system\u2019s chancellor\u2019s office, legislative leaders and Newsom\u2019s administration to reach a solution.

Not all affected campuses would have walked from their housing projects. While Lake Tahoe Community College\u2019s board had concerns with moving from upfront cash to issuing bonds, \u201cthey trusted the state and were still willing to move forward because they knew it’s the right thing to do for our students,\u201d said Laura Metune, the college\u2019s senior director of government relations. \u201cBut having the state take on the debt is a much better option for the college.\u201d

Keith Curry, president of Compton College, wouldn\u2019t have abandoned his college\u2019s project for 250 dorm beds either. \u201cMy track record as a college president is that we figure stuff out that’s important to our students,\u201d he told CalMatters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How the two bills would work<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The legislative fix would reverse the June budget deal, which told the colleges that received grants from the 2022 budget act to pay back that money now, <\/em>explained Laird\u2019s staff. <\/em>Instead, the two bills are telling those colleges to return the cash<\/a> to the state by June 29, 2024, or a short time after. Doing so allows those colleges to move ahead with their construction plans and avoid delays, Laird told CalMatters, which can be expensive in construction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n