Nearly 1,000 new units of campus housing could be developed over the next decade in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood to serve students and scholars at University of California at San Francisco and UC Hastings College of the Law.
UCSF and UC Hastings have signed a letter of intent to jointly develop new campus housing and renovate existing housing in an effort to serve the growing housing needs of their students and trainees.
UCSF chancellor Sam Hawgood said the proposal is just one of a number of approaches that university administrators hope will address the lack of affordable housing for students in the city.
“The housing shortage is affecting every resident in this city, including university students,” Hawgood said in a statement. “As a result, a growing number of top-quality students are choosing to study somewhere else, which creates a tremendous loss of potential talent for the city.”
University officials anticipate that if the project moves forward successfully, UC Hastings would complete development of its new academic building at 333 Golden Gate Ave. in 2020, freeing up an aging academic building at 198 McAllister Ave. to be developed into housing, with anticipated completion in 2022.
An adjacent building at 50 Hyde St. would potentially also be developed for housing, according to university officials.
Between 535 and 970 new campus housing units could be created in the Tenderloin and Civic Center areas by 2025, according to UC officials.
Renovations to UC Hastings’ 252 existing housing units in the McAllister Tower, located at 100 McAllister Ave., are estimated under the proposal for completion in 2025.
In addition to providing centrally located housing options that are within the financial means of graduate students, the two universities hope their students, who are all at the graduate level, will increasingly collaborate across disciplines.
UCSF, which is focused on health sciences, and UC Hastings, which is focused on law, already collaborate on the Consortium of Law, Science and Health Policy and are jointly launching an online course in health policy law in fall 2016.
University officials said additional campus housing in the Tenderloin area will bring about increased street level activation and urban vibrancy.
University officials have said the proposal also aims to enable UCSF students and trainees to benefit from campus amenities at UC Hastings, such as food service, security, fitness facilities, the UC Hastings library, as well as social space and parking, while members of the UC Hastings community would be able to benefit from the UCSF shuttle service, which already passes by McAllister Tower.
The proposal to create university-specific housing also aims to reduce the current strain on the city’s overall housing market.
UC Hastings chancellor Frank Wu said in a statement, “This makes sense for our students and for our community.”
Hannah Albarazi, Bay City News
