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Heeding long-standing requests from city officials and student activists, UC Berkeley plans to add more than 1,000 new beds for students over the next three years. 

The first housing project in a wave of four new developments will open this fall. The 120-bed dormitory at the intersection of College and Durant avenues is the university’s first housing addition since 1995. 

In 2004 the university plans to complete a 228-bed apartment complex at the intersection of Channing Avenue and Bowditch Street. In 2005 the university will open four new dormitories, totaling 884 beds. Two will be built next to existing dormitories on Durant Street and two will be built next to existing dormitories on Haste Street. 

Currently, UC Berkeley has approximately 5000 beds for students. The new developments will increase this figure by more than 20 percent.  

“This is in answer to the housing shortage,” said Michelle Kniffin of the university’s housing office. 

Student officials credit the university for taking action, but they insist it can do more. 

“They are doing everything they can to build housing within the constraints they have, but they should remove those constraints,” said Tony Falcone, academic affairs vice president of Associated Students of the University of California.  

Falcone said the major obstacle to new housing is a university policy which requires the housing department to pay for the replacement of every parking space that is lost to a new dormitory. 

Each space is valued at approximately $21,000, according to Falcone, who estimated that to build a dormitory in place of a 60-space parking lot the housing department must pay the parking department more than a million dollars.  

Because the greatest potential for housing exists on current parking lots, the cost of building new dormitories is artificially high, he said. 

Chris Harvey, director of residential and student service programs, acknowledged that the policy added to the cost of new dormitory construction, but thought the fee was reasonable. 

“It’s not like they’re ripping us off,” he said. “This is the real world cost for those parking spaces.” 

But Falcone said students are the losers in this equation.  

The added costs for replacing the lost parking spaces are factored into student room and board fees, he said. Effectively, students pay higher fees to subsidize the parking spaces of the faculty and other university employees, he said. 

According to Harvey, the university has also identified three other parking lots on university property where it hopes to build dormitories. 

The new developments are part of the university’s long range plan, written in 1990. The plan calls for the construction of 2,000 new beds, but according to Falcone, unexpected retrofitting costs and the favorable housing market during the early 1990s delayed construction until now. 

Howard Chong, a rent board commissioner and former student, said the university needed to catch up to its housing goal, because a state law requires it to increase enrollment by several thousand students by 2010. 

Chong said that in addition to building on university-owned land, UC Berkeley should work with non-profit developers and the student housing cooperatives, which he said have proven to build more cost-effective housing for students. 

Contact reporter at matt@berkeleydailyplanet.net