Parents living in UC Santa Cruz’s family student housing complex on the west side of campus say the university has neglected the 53-year-old units as it builds a replacement that won’t open until more than a year from now. They’re fighting a rent increase while demanding the university do something about mold and other problems they claim are making their children sick. 

Lookout spoke to tenants who reported having family members who developed asthma, allergies and/or rashes they believe are due to mold exposure. Several said they had maintenance complaints go unaddressed for months, and all said they feel as if the university has simply left the units to deteriorate. They’ve written letters and had one meeting with administrators since May, but a recent $65-a-month rent increase still went into effect in July. 

This summer, UCSC began construction of a new Family Student Housing complex at the corner of Hagar and Coolidge drives, known as phase 1 of the Student Housing West project. Officials expect it to be open to residents by late 2025. At that time, residents in the existing facility can begin moving into the new one, although there will be only 120 units in the complex — 155 families live in the existing apartments — and the cost of rent in the new complex could be as much as $500 a month higher. UCSC has let a number of units in the existing 196-unit complex go vacant to align with the lower initial capacity of the new housing project. 

Once the new Family Student Housing complex opens, the existing buildings will be demolished for the construction of about 2,700 units for upper-division undergraduates and 220 graduate students in six buildings. That location, called the Heller site, is phase 2 of Student Housing West.

LuLing Osofsky, a leading organizer for families, said residents are frustrated as they see the university moving forward with the new complex while many of their requests for maintenance, improved housing conditions and affordable rents go unanswered.

“We let them know that residents really need more transparency and information about the new Family Student housing complex, but also a reminder that we live in the current Family Student Housing complex until the new complex is built and we don’t even know if we’re going to be able to afford to move there,” she said of a recent meeting with university housing officials. “Our current conditions remain pressing for us, and our inability to afford our current place remains pressing to us.”

Survey says mold; university is mum 

About 76% of Family Student Housing residents reported mold in their apartments and 61.5% reported asthma or allergies that they linked to habitability issues, according to a survey from the recently formed Family Student Housing Tenant Association that yielded 42 responses.

Osofsky and another student presented the survey results, along with allegations that the university isn’t complying with state housing codes, during a meeting Aug. 1 with several housing administrators, including Laura Arroyo, associate vice chancellor of housing services. They asked the university to waive a $65-a-month rent increase that UCSC has implemented annually for the past several years. 

Arroyo declined to be interviewed for this story but answered several questions via email. She didn’t say whether the university was considering waiving the rent increase and didn’t respond to questions about how inspections are done and how often, nor whether any of the units were found to be substandard. 

“Housing rates have certainly continued to rise nationally due to the increased cost of staffing, services and operational needs. We strive to keep rate increases as low as possible in meeting these increased demands, all while still working to provide quality housing to UCSC students,” she wrote via email. “Health and safety and the student experience are central to my decision-making.” 

Osofsky told Lookout that Arroyo offered to follow up with her and the other student, Stephanie Valadez, about the meeting, but she’s yet to hear back. With the recent rate increase in July, the two-bedroom apartments cost families $1,893 a month. 

Osofsky, a seventh-year visual studies Ph.D. candidate, lives in an apartment with her husband and 4-year-old child. Her husband, Key MacFarlane, is also a graduate student. 

She said they got lucky with their unit and haven’t had severe issues with mold or broken furnaces like several of their neighbors. However, as their child has gotten old enough to play outside, they’ve noticed many exposed nails, falling retaining walls and fences and neglected infrastructure. 

Osofsky and her husband spend about 60% of their income on rent, which she estimates is an average among the residents in Family Student Housing. After hearing and seeing what residents have gone through with mold, broken furnaces, high electric bills from using dehumidifiers and other concerns, her objection to this year’s rent increase intensified. 

A May 20 letter to Chancellor Cynthia Larive and other administrators about the issue was signed by more than 400 people, including residents and supporters. 

“Not only can we not afford this increase, the conditions of our apartments warrant an indefinite moratorium on rental increases,” residents wrote in the letter. “We ask that the university make the ethical decision to waive this rental increase and to halt future increases until we are lifted out of rent burden and housed in safe and functional units.”

Last year, UCSC officials estimated that rent would cost about $2,400 in the new Family Student Housing complex once it opens in late 2025. Osofsky doesn’t know what families will do if rent were to increase by about $500 a month.

“That’s very anxiety-inducing because people don’t know if they can even move into the new complex, if it will even be affordable at all,” she said. “The reason we’re fighting this increase is because people can barely afford our current rent. The idea of it going up is very stressful. Not knowing how much it will go up is very stressful.”

Last week, Lookout asked UCSC officials whether the rates shared last year were still being considered. They would say only that rates for 2025 weren’t yet available. 

Additionally, the university is reducing the number of units from the current 196 to 120 at the new Family Student Housing site. Osofsky and other residents are outraged and concerned, saying there’s already a shortage of units. 

“Current occupancy is being lowered to align with the capacity for the new Family Student Housing complex,” wrote Arroyo via email. “This will allow all existing residents at the time of occupancy to move to the new complex.” 

In the meantime, current Family Student Housing residents continue to navigate mold and other challenging conditions. 

‘We had a really incredible mold problem’

Kat Bernier, a Ph.D. candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology, lives in Family Student Housing with her husband and two children, 2 and 3 years of age. They moved there in September 2021. Her husband, Eric Stoorza, works for Santa Cruz Metro.

After discovering a mold problem in late winter, Bernier said they lost about four weeks of time to being sick, doctor visits, moving furniture and coordinating with maintenance workers for floor repairs to replace the mold damage and cleaning mold from their furniture and belongings. 

“The mold is a big concern, but also the time lost. Having to deal with all of this, having to be home for maintenance workers, submitting the fix-it tickets and working on a Ph.D. at the same time – I don’t have time for this,” she said. “I also have a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old, which is another full-time job.” 

This past December, Stoorza and their daughter started getting sick with itchy faces, eyes and throats, cough and congestion. They realized soon that it was indoor allergies and not an illness. 

“They had never had indoor or seasonal allergies,” said Bernier. 

One day in late February, she was moving laundry around in her room and saw black and green mold around an electrical outlet. 

“I saw it was growing up the legs of the dressers, backs of the dressers, the back side of the draperies,” she said. Within the next day or so, she went to the university’s maintenance office to talk about the mold. Officials told her to submit an online request, which she did Feb. 23. 

Bernier said maintenance workers brought her a dehumidifier the same day and an air purifier for their living room. Within a week, UCSC Environmental Health & Safety staff brought a moisture reader and they detected 80 to 90% moisture in the walls, causing them to think there was a leak in the wall. UCSC then called roofers to inspect the roof for potential leaks. 

Bernier said she doesn’t know what they found or if anything with the roof was connected to the mold issue downstairs. But maintenance workers told her they would come replace the carpet, and they marked the maintenance request, which they call fix-it tickets, as resolved. 

“Then a month or so went by. Maintenance never returned,” she said. “I submitted another fix-it ticket because my son and I started to get sick late March or early April. I submitted that ticket the third week of May.”

They came within a few days, and the workers pulled up half the carpet in her and her husband’s bedroom. They cut out a big section in the carpet pad and told them to keep the pad folded back because the subfloor was still damp and needed to dry out. 

“After that, we all got sick instantly, like within a couple days,” she said. “We were all coughing, hacking, wheezing, I had a hard time breathing. So I moved upstairs to sleep.” 

Bernier’s symptoms continued worsening, so in early June she went to the doctor. Her doctor put her on steroids and gave her an asthma inhaler – she had never had asthma. She went back after her first course of steroids were done, and her symptoms had worsened, so her doctor put her on stronger steroids. 

Bernier had developed a “deep bronchial cough” and had shortness of breath after simple activities. She asked if the doctor could give her a test that might detect mold exposure. Her doctor said they don’t have testing for mold exposure and referred her to an allergist. By the end of June, her symptoms had subsided. It had been a couple of weeks since they replaced the floor in both her and her husband’s bedroom and her children’s bedroom. 

“We had a really incredible mold problem,” she said. 

Beyond health problems, a financial toll

The mold destroyed multiple pieces of furniture and belongings, including bedside tables and their bed frame. They kept their mattress, which was likely also affected by mold, because they plan to move back to Colorado in December anyway when Bernier finishes her program. 

“We bought an impermeable mattress encasement, so hopefully if there’s any mold in there it will stay in there,” she said. 

She estimates that her family lost about $2,400 in belongings. Bernier asked the university who would pay for the losses, and said officials told her the renters insurance would. Bernier talked to the insurance company and it said her landlord is supposed to cover the cost. 

“Both parties pointed at each other,” she said. “I have neither the time nor the energy to fight it.”

The week the floor was replaced, June 3 through 7, she and her husband took the entire week off of work so they could move all the furniture out of both rooms, clean everything and then move it back in. 

Bernier said maintenance workers removed the carpet and carpet pad, placed down thin plywood sheathing and then new linoleum flooring. She, like many of the residents, told Lookout said the maintenance workers are great and do what they can to help residents deal with the aging apartments. 

Bernier said she has loved living with the Family Student Housing community and that there are many great aspects of living there. Residents are all in similar situations of pursuing degrees while living with family or raising kids. She is grateful that they have child care from the university’s Early Education Services, and more affordable housing than off-campus options. 

However, she’s frustrated about the condition of the housing. 

“The housing crumbling apart around us has kind of been a nightmare,” she said. “It’s just sheer exhaustion. Just having to keep up with all of that and work on grad school and have small children. It’s just utter exhaustion beyond anything else.”

‘They’re going to tear down these buildings’

Third-year music Ph.D. student Steph Valadez, who lives in Family Student Housing with her two kids, said her 2-year-old son developed a rash and asthma symptoms this winter that went away as soon as they left the units for the summer. She suspects it’s from mold. Valadez said she feels the university is looking for the cheapest ways to fix things and not addressing issues like mold. 

“From a business standpoint, I understand it, because they’re going to tear down those buildings,” she said. “And at the same time, they’re letting this place deteriorate in a way that’s unsafe. There are a bunch of places around FSH where there’s exposed nails, the fences are dangerous, some of them are falling over.”

A fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the literature department, Kristen Nelson, told Lookout that she developed a rash on her eyes and swelling around her eyes in February 2022. She and her partner moved into the complex in August 2021 from Tucson, Arizona. 

Nelson went to the doctor, who sent her to several allergists, dermatologists and other specialists. 

“It was really painful and uncomfortable,” she said. “It actually made it really hard to read. So I was having a really hard time keeping up with classes. And then it progressively got worse and worse.” 

As summer neared and she left Santa Cruz for the warmer months, her symptoms went away. When Nelson came back to her apartment in the fall, the hives returned. She and her doctor thought she had something in her apartment or a product she had at home that was causing the reaction. She started testing out new products and nothing helped.

Nelson said through her own process of elimination, she thought to turn off their heater in May 2023. The hives went away again. On June 16, her doctor wrote a letter for her addressed to the UCSC Housing Services office asking for an evaluation of her heating system. 

“This is a letter of support to Housing Services to have the heating and ventilation system in her housing evaluated for potential environmental pathogens,” she wrote. “I have been working with her for many months in regard to severe facial and eye swelling.” 

Shortly after, a worker from UCSC Environmental Health & Safety visited and inspected her apartment and confirmed only verbally, Nelson said, that the apartment has a mold problem. Lookout reached out to this staff member and they declined to be interviewed, referring all questions to the media relations office. 

Nelson, however, recalls what the employee said. 

“She was very clear. She was like, they’re not going to do anything, don’t waste your breath. It’s one of the reasons they’re knocking down Family Student Housing,” Nelson said. “They know that this is an issue, that there’s mold in the walls, that it’s not really habitable, that people will continue to get sick if they live here. It’s why they’re tearing it down and building a new complex. Because it’s not cost-effective for them to rip out all the walls and put in new moisture barriers.” 

Nelson said she and her partner decided to stay because they can’t afford to live anywhere else in Santa Cruz. They’re choosing instead to not use the heater, to run dehumidifiers constantly, and after this year, they’ll move away. Nelson will finish her program remotely. 

“I’m grateful to continue to live here,that’s the crux of it. I love living on campus. I love having enough space to be able to live our lives in a relatively comfortable way, and I love the community that I live in,” she said. “But it’s been a challenge.”

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