This new dorm will house both UC and community college students. Is it the way forward?

Despite the harsh summer sun, about 250 construction workers hustle each day on the north end of UC Riverside's campus.

Their mission is to build a new dorm by next summer, one that will house 1,568 students — including more than 300 from local community colleges.

The project, made possible by hundreds of millions in state funding, will provide much-needed affordable housing for the Riverside Community College District , where recent surveys indicate that about 14% of students have experienced housing insecurity.

And the project has another purpose: to encourage community college students to envision themselves at the university. Their apartments “will be sprinkled throughout” the new dorm, not set apart, said Jacqueline Norman, UCR’s campus architect and associate vice chancellor.

How do you build a dorm for two schools?

Construction on the project began last November, two years after the state put out a call for grant applications to support new housing.

Every unit will have a private restroom and kitchenette. And because the Inland Empire can get dangerously hot, each apartment will also have its own air conditioning unit and thermostat. Everyone has different comfort levels, so this will give students more control over the temperature in their homes, said John Franklin, UCR’s senior project manager. “You’ll just have to battle your roommates,” quipped Eric Speik, senior project manager with McCarthy Building Companies.

(And yes, the apartments are also built to be resilient in an earthquake.)

When the project is complete, students will have access to a park, with trees that have been conserved through the construction process. Local animals, including wild donkeys and bobcats, sometimes like to roam about.

“It doesn’t look very park-ish right now,” Norman said, “but I promise it will be nice.”

Students from both systems will be neighbors, sharing hallways, a gym, a café, courtyards, and a park. With time, Norman and her colleagues hope, those shared experiences will lead to lasting bonds and increased transfer rates.

The bulk of the units in the building will be for undergraduate housing, she added, but some rooms have been set aside for graduate students. Most units will be shared, but single-occupancy rooms will be available for students who’d like more privacy.

What problems can a new dorm address?

When Heidi Scribner, UCR’s associate vice chancellor for auxiliary services, was crafting the application used to secure funding for this project, she had several issues in mind:

• One was Riverside County’s low rate of bachelor’s degree attainment , in comparison to neighbors like L.A. and Orange counties.
• Community college enrollment had also dropped amid the pandemic, and she knew it would take time and effort to rebuild the transfer pipeline.
• There were more than 3,000 UCR students on the waitlist for campus housing.

Her colleagues at the Riverside Community College District shared most of those concerns. The new dorm serving both schools is a way “to create an educational transfer pathway and support the demand for housing in our region,” said Claire Oliveros, president of Riverside City College.

On Tuesday, the Riverside Community College District will issue another survey to better understand how students’ housing needs have changed since the pandemic and use this data to determine who will get housed at UCR. For now, eligibility will involve taking on at least 12 units of study, per the state’s requirements . The district also plans to offer this housing for less than $1,000 a month.

Will it work?

Thomas Cruz-Soto, Riverside City College’s dean of student services, said the success of the project will be measured by the number of students who transfer to a UC or CSU. They'll also be closely watching the number of students who earn a certificate and then “go back to the workforce, and earn a livable California wage.”

Oliveros, RCC's president, said she’s also interested in conducting a formal assessment, “so that we can capture what’s going well and where we can improve.”

The effort might lead to change elsewhere too: Long Beach City College has reached out to leaders at the Riverside Community College District. They wanted to learn more about the district's partnership with UCR, in hopes of doing something similar with Cal State Long Beach, said Hussain Agah, associate vice chancellor of facilities planning & development. He’s also been approached by UCLA and Santa Monica College.

“They’re watching what we do,” he said.