One of the lovely traditions that follows being a University of California, Berkeley student is stressing over where you’ll live for the school year. For commuter students or people who live in the Bay Area, this issue is non-existent, but for those of us who leave our hometowns for college, the struggle of finding any four-walled room where you can sleep is inevitable. I know for me at least, the housing crisis has made my standards of living extremely low. Mold is normalized and 100 sq. feet off-campus double rooms are “luxury.” But alas, I have a beautifully long and ugly experience with Berkeley housing.
I think one of the biggest things prospective students forget when applying to UC Berkeley is how difficult finding sustainable housing truly is. I know it was one of my faults, especially since I grew up in a city that has housing available on a stable rotation but also isn’t priced extremely high. And so, knowing nothing about the actual housing crisis, when applying for on-campus housing I chose the cheapest options without taking into account why those options were “inexpensive.” In my freshman year, I ended up in a triple dorm in one of the worst-rated housing units. It was so bad. The showers ran on only cold water, there was mold everywhere, and no heater or air conditioning. By the end of my first year, I vowed to never live in this unit ever again. You’ll see later on, that this was only the surface of my interactions with this unit.
My second-year housing situation was significantly worse, but also better. Housing through UC Berkeley works oddly. Offers come out in rounds from March through April, so if you don’t get an offer during the first round, you can still get chosen in the next rounds after until the school eventually ends rounds. For me, I didn’t get an offer during the first round, which left me disappointed. I had opted to submit the same answers as a friend so we’d have better chances of getting an apartment whilst also thinking since I was a second year I’d have easier odds at getting the better housing options. Lucky for me, my disappointment was quickly forgotten as I got chosen during the second round. Unfortunately for me, my friend and I didn’t get the same housing offers, despite having the same answers. I also didn’t get an apartment, but instead got another housing unit, although it was considered the best of the Unit options. So I had a bit of a struggle: find an off-campus apartment in the middle of March or accept this offer with a random roommate and in the Units again. Taking into account everything, I accepted Berkeley’s housing offer and moved in, in August. As I’m currently sitting in my dorm writing this, I’m freezing because there’s no heater, I’m about to take a shower with no hot water, and the water filter for the building hasn’t been changed in weeks. Safe to say, I miss my house and clean water all. the. time.
The third time around, the third time’s the charm, or not in this case. One thing about moving into an area that has a housing crisis is that I have no idea what to do in terms of housing. The extent of my information is Zillow and UC Berkeley’s housing portal. So when March came around I was already late to search for off-campus housing, although I managed to submit a housing application via the school. With that being said, I messaged EVERYONE to let me sublease with them, join a lease with them, live with their family, anything and everything. Fast forward to the end of March, I still had no housing to accept. I also failed to get a housing offer from UC Berkeley in the first two rounds, so it’s safe to say I was close to being homeless.
But then, on one Wednesday afternoon in the Environmental Design Library the email of a lifetime came. I got a housing offer. Only it was back in my freshman year unit, the same unit I vowed to never step foot in again. So unfortunately, I’ll be a third year in the fall living in a dorm known for housing freshmen, because I live in a housing crisis.
The moral of the story here is that a bed is a bed, a room is a room, and UC Berkeley isn’t No. 1 in everything, certainly not housing for its students.