California Set to Offer Student Housing Grants

• Author: William Asher
• Posted: 2024-06-10

California has recently become a very polarizing state in America. There was a time when California was universally admired and the envy of most who didn't live there.

After all, it's the state that spurred the Gold Rush. It was home to the San Francisco Bay area. It's where most of the rock music from the Vietnam era ended up. It had the best sports teams; it was Hollywood through and through.

These days, however, California is mostly known for high taxes, a lot of homeless people, and an open-air drug market.

It's also known for still having some of the best colleges around, however, and it attracts many thousands of new students every year.

One of the big issues with students going to school in the state, however, is that it's hard to afford dorm rooms. This is why California is now offering grants to help subsidize student housing.

The Affordable Student Housing Grants (ASH) are to be awarded to some of the state's community colleges and a few top flight universities, in this initial trial run of the program.

According to the California Department of Finance, colleges like UCLA, San Fran State, UC San Diego, and a few others will be receiving grants for their students. They will be offering up $480 million for approximately 3,545 students who need housing.

While this is great news, a few critics with a calculator have already begun to oppose this measure, claiming that there's no possible way a student needs over $135k for lodging while attending the university.

The aspect of this measure with which critics take umbrage is that they assume the academics and tenured professionals of the universities will have a field day spending $125k each on their own little pet projects and new vehicles, while the students get placed in some repurposed homeless shelter, which will cost the colleges about $10,000 each.

The money is going straight to the administrators, and not the students, which always seems to be the case with government grants. The money passes hands multiple times before it ends up in the hands of the intended target, at which point there's little money left.

The fact remains, however, that thousands of students attending these colleges do not have anywhere to live while they're enrolled in the school, and the state is seeking to change that.

A Lot More Enrollees Than Employees

A sobering fact about college in America is that north of 60% of college graduates are currently unemployed or employed in some field that they didn't major in at college.

This isn't some secret in America; more and more kids graduating high school recognize this, and so many are opting for trade schools and apprentice programs instead of going into over $100,000 in debt just for a degree that might not even pay off.

So it stands to reason that colleges need to do more to keep kids excited about enrolling. Offering subsidized housing can, in theory, attract a lot more kids to college.

Administrators for some of California's top universities are not shy about pointing out how they would really like to offer incentives for student enrollment. Of course, with the cost of college in California, everyone is making money except those who enroll.

Tuition Is Going Up

Speaking of money, tuition in California is at an all-time high and expected to go up. While there's an ever-growing contingent of former college grads demanding student loan forgiveness from the federal government, most colleges are raising their tuition rates, and the government has no issue in backing these loans.

According to many critics, 'corporate college' is a racket that takes advantage of young adults. According to the colleges in California, they're just trying to give kids a brighter future, and they need this money to subsidize housing in the form of grants.

Other States Will Wait and See

Other states are likely going to wait and see how things work out in California before they try some of the same. You can expect states like Oregon and Washington to be the next to try these things, as these western states share the same sort of collegiate culture. Then it's likely to spread to New York and the northeast.

It's unclear how the grants are going to be administered once colleges get them. Updates on how the money will be spent should be forthcoming in the next few weeks.