By: Leila Alarcon and Erika Figueroa
As college students struggle to find housing, universities such as Cal Poly Humboldt and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo have developed off-campus housing programs to assist students.
While Long Beach State is developing more off-campus resources, students currently looking for off-campus housing are directed to a webpage and a Facebook group run by three alumni.
Vi Lepham, a second-year communications student, used the university-listed resources when searching for off-campus housing. However, as the school year approached, Lepham found herself accepting that she would just have to commute from Huntington Beach.
“Oftentimes everybody was using the same resources,” Lepham said. “I would email landlords and they would just never respond back so I just thought the website was a dud so I didn’t use it.”
The webpage provided by the university contains links to other sites such as a blog post on avoiding housing scams by Rent College Pads, the Long Beach State Rent College Pads housing market, a public CSU housing Facebook group and a private Long Beach State housing Facebook group. The webpage warns that the university does not manage any of the listed off-campus resources.
According to Corry Colonna, executive director of housing and residential life and auxiliaries, Rent College Pads had 40,000 logins and 6,900 inquiries to landlords and renting spaces last year. The private Facebook group is also active, boasting over 18,000 members and 163 new posts in the last month.
Originally established 12 years ago, the private Facebook group is not run by a professional organization. Long Beach State alumni and current English teacher in Japan Orion Kongmalay is the main administrator of the group.
He initially volunteered to remove bots from the Facebook group before becoming the main administrator and bringing in other administrators to help. Kongmalay thought the popularity of the Facebook group came from word of mouth, but eventually found out that the group was advertised on the university’s off-campus resources website.
Bexie Mussmann, another administrator of the group and a full-team team assistant and event planner, was unaware that the school advertised the group.
“I think it highlights just how poor the officially established resources by the school itself are,” Mussmann said. “The CSULB Roommate Finder page was created independently without any funding or sponsorship.”
Despite no longer attending Long Beach State, both administrators intend to keep the group open.
“The Roommate Finder was the only way I was able to find housing for the duration of my college career,” Kongmalay said. “I personally felt that if I could help others do the same thing, then why not keep the group open?”
In addition to online resources, residential assistants (RA) held roommate mixers at the three housing villages last year so that students could find roommate matches. These mixers followed the news of limited spaces in the dormitories for returning students.
Meanwhile, campuses such as Cal Poly Humboldt and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo have developed off-campus housing offices in order to assist students with the various struggles that come with living off campus.
Enrollment demographics for fall 2023 show that 70% of students at Cal Poly Humboldt live off campus. According to Stephen St. Onge, executive director for auxiliary operations, their off-campus housing office was established six years ago to ensure that students had safe and affordable housing options.
The school receives grants to help defray the costs of security deposits and applications. The university also has partnerships, training and agreements with local property managers and landlords.
Their website displays the provided off-campus housing services, from consultations about rental processes to virtual property showings. Their education program, Humboldt Tenant Landlord Collaboration, promotes best practices for tenants and landlords.
“We have less students in need of emergency housing,” St. Onge said. “More students are finding access to safe and affordable housing as we increase those opportunities.”
Cal Poly Humboldt is a smaller campus with 5,976 students as of fall 2023. Long Beach State, in comparison, has 38,273 students. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is a larger campus with 21,778 students as of fall 2022.
Sarah Bacio, the off-campus housing coordinator at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, believes her position came as a result of students voicing their need for more off-campus housing resources. Her position was created only about a year ago.
Bacio assists students through workshops on home safety, everyday home maintenance, how to talk to landlords and property managers, tenant rights, what to look for when touring places, roommate connections and vacating properly. Parents can also attend these workshops to gain knowledge about the housing market around the university.
“There’s been so much turnout for workshops,” Bacio said. “We do a mix of workshops in person and virtual to try to kind of make it as accessible as possible for folks.”
Bacio promotes her services on campus through booths so that students can ask her questions. Similar to Cal Poly Humboldt, Bacio works on building a relationship with local property managers and landlords to encourage a smooth transition for students and landlords.
While Long Beach State doesn’t have its own off-campus coordinator, more efforts have been dedicated to promoting off-campus resources and further expanding them.
This year, Colonna would like to hold another roommate mixer at the Pointe Conference Center in the Walter Pyramid for off-campus students to join as well. Colonna has met with Associated Students, Inc., ASI, to promote future roommate mixers and other off-campus resources.
While Long Beach State does not have plans to create an off-campus housing coordinator position or office, Colonna said that two existing positions in housing have recently expanded to offer off-campus housing support.
The goals for these positions would include running programs for students to find roommates, understand renter’s rights and connect with renters and landlords.
“There isn’t enough on-campus housing and frankly there aren’t enough suitable housing options for students off campus in the area,” Colonna said.
“Our office, the university president, and city are all talking about ways to increase capacity to better meet the need.”
“They don’t have any resources that are good right now so they should create a department or a dedicated place for it,” Lepham said.
Lepham hopes to see an increase in dorm capacity and more off-campus resources to assist with student housing. With more universities developing off-campus housing offices, off-campus coordinators could become more common.