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Hello, Navajo and College Area!
For the past couple of years, I have been lucky to teach a few journalism classes at San Diego State University.
The experience has been eye-opening for many reasons — how young the students are and how old I feel being their teacher, which I won’t go into detail about.
Most every student I hear from has two major complaints: The cost of parking and, most of all, the cost of housing at or near SDSU.
Parking has always been difficult at any college campus — I still have dreams about trying to get to class for a test and having to park miles away, only to realize my legs are stuck in mud and I can only shuffle.
But it’s the second complaint from my students— the cost of housing— that leaves me speechless.
While it comes as no surprise to hear that housing is expensive, I am amazed at how some students manage to pull it off.
When they tell me how expensive and how difficult it is to find and pay for housing, I do my best to keep quiet. I do because I have no answers. I don’t want to tell them that the only way my family and I have managed to buy a home in San Carlos was because of luck— namely, the 2011 housing crisis:
“Well, students, what you have to do is just really hope for an economic crisis that leaves millions destitute…”
That doesn’t sound like a very responsible message.
But while at an Aug. 10 meeting of the College Area Planning Group, I felt like I had a new message: The college and others are fast at work to get more housing for students.
The newest announcement was the redevelopment of San Diego State’s Chabad House. Developer Weston Harmer was at the planning group meeting with renderings and details. As of now, the current proposal is to tear down the current building and build an 8-story, stepping down to six stories on the residential street, student housing project. The building will have 78-units, eight of which will be affordable.
While 78-units will hardly solve any student housing issues, this comes as SDSU is busy building hundreds of new housing units, including the redevelopment of University Towers next to the Chabad House properties.
And while I am sure these projects present some very real issues for nearby residents: parking, fire hazards, traffic, to name a few. The only solution to help drive living costs down for a college that wants to continue to expand is to build more housing units. For my students and others, I just hope they don’t need an economic fallout to happen to live in one.
Dorian Hargrove
Mission Times newsletter host
Navajo, College Area story spotlight
SDSU Chabad House demolition set to make way for 8-story student housing
By Drew Sitton • Times of San Diego
Chabad House at San Diego State set for demolition to make room for an 8-story student housing project.
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