La Playa Hall is scheduled to break ground on Hillside North next spring to provide more beds in an effort to increase affordable student housing on campus.
It will be built on the field next to Los Alamitos Hall, adding at least 424 beds distributed across single and double-occupancy rooms to Long Beach State’s housing facilities with a total project cost of $105 million, according to the project’s website.
Mark Zakhour, associate vice president of Beach Building Services, said this project was part of a grant program established by Senate Bill 169. Zakhour also said the grant is covering about half of the cost of the project.
The completion date is set for Fall 2026 with construction starting in Spring 2024. Zakhour said the goal of this project is to address the lack of beds and accommodate an increased demand for more affordable housing on campus.
“So we have about 2,000 people on our waitlist right now for housing that aren’t able to get housing because they don’t have enough housing here on campus,” Zakhour said.
Zakhour mentioned there was a housing crisis in California and that the school is trying to offer students a place to live at an affordable rate during this time.
“We’re trying to build more housing to allow our students to have some place to live to be either at market rate or an affordable rate to allow them those types of options,” Zakhor said.
This new building will include a built-in mental health facility run by the Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) program on campus.
Zakhour said this extension of the CAPS program has been implemented in other housing locations.
“They have it right now, built one recently in the, I believe it’s the Los Alamitos Hall,” Zakhour said. “We built each of those renovations a few years ago, we’ve built two satellite CAPS offices also, so it will probably be run similar to that.”
Amanda De Loera-Morales, CAPS director, said having the satellite offices should make mental health services more accessible.
“So essentially it’s operating the… services out of a different space but it’s still an equally important and valuable space for mental health,” Loera-Morales said.
These offices in student housing facilities have been able to address issues unique to students living in dorms.
“They have benefitted having someone there for them,” Leora-Morales said. “So our counselor has been able to offer a number of different spaces for our students and the struggles that some of our different students within the dorms are unique to maybe, roommate challenges or just kind of navigating life for sure on their own.”
This affordable housing project will also involve the other housing facilities on campus.
“The most important thing to think about this project is, this project is putting 404 beds on this campus that are affordable [out of 424 beds being built for this project], meaning that they’re below the market rate,” Zakhour said. “They’re more affordable than the other beds but we’re not putting all those affordable beds just in this building. So we’re building the new beds in this building and we’re spreading the affordable beds through all of our buildings.”
According to the website, this system of bed distribution enables students of the same academic year to room together, “in the type of housing that is most suited for their living experience.”
Zakhour said the goal is to provide more affordable housing for students without being singled out as part of the program. He said this will be accomplished by some of the beds classified under affordable student housing being distributed through the other living facilities on campus.
“They’ll never know who has an affordable bed,” Zakhour said. “You could be anywhere in any of our housing buildings and be in an affordable bed.”