Goleta to Sue UCSB over Lack of Housing
City Expresses Doubt Munger Hall Will Be Built Anytime Soon
The public outcry against UC Santa Barbara’s Munger Hall has grown so loud that the City of Goleta has taken the position that “there may be no certainty as to whether the needed student housing will be built in a reasonable time frame.” Those were the words of Goleta Mayor Paula Perotte in a city press release on Friday that announced Goleta will sue the UC Regents for failing to provide student housing and that it now impacts Goleta revenue and the city’s own ability to house its workforce.
Between the intractability of a billionaire donor — Charlie Munger, who offered the university $200 million and final plans he had made for a 4,500-person, windowless dormitory — and the COVID pandemic, the university finds itself in a tough spot. To reduce the number of students per room in on-campus housing because of coronavirus, it placed students in nearby hotel rooms. But those students came from the state’s push to increase resident enrollment and was not the university’s choice, UCSB indicated in statements provided by Andrea Estrada, director of communications. For Goleta, because the students stay for more than 30 days, no transient occupancy tax (TOT) can be collected, hurting a bottom line already compromised by COVID revenue losses.
Goleta’s lawsuit comes out of a 2010 settlement between the city and UC Regents that agreed to UCSB’s Long Range Development Plan as long as the school capped enrollment at 25,000 but kept pace by building housing for the 5,000 new students. According to UCSB’s “Facts and Figures” page, a total of 26,179 students were enrolled for fall 2020. And although the university has convulsed with construction in recent years, finishing the 1,000-bed San Joaquin Villages in 2017 and Sierra Madre Apartments in 2015, which holds 515 students, it is clearly short of enrollment. Since the two were completed, the highly controversial Munger Hall is the major project in the works.
