UCI Housing Warning

[itsbits]

For anyone that has been accepted to UCI and offered housing. Beware. The university can and will effectively deprive you of housing despite your offer. How do I know? It’s happened to me and countless others. Here are some things I have seen happen to graduate students:

• The university provides a housing offer the student cannot afford. From what I can tell, this happens most often to students who request family units. This is because a family unit requires you to rent out the entire place, and unless you have another working adult in the house (or other arrangements of course), the floorpans as currently priced usually take up most, if not all, of our University stipends. In fact, there are currently only two floor plans in each graduate housing community that one could rent out and not count as legally rent burdened (over 30% of your income is spent on rent).
• The university provides a move in date that does not accommodate the student’s timeline. We are often unpaid over the summer, yet can be asked to sign a lease/start paying rent at the beginning of it. If you can’t take the lease right away you risk a more expensive unit and/or no offer at all (see above). I will spare details for space, but this has happened to me even though the reason I could not move right away was because I had to have surgery the following month where I was living and could not afford to pay rent in both places. Housing’s response? Try your luck next quarter.
• In my experience, the university has very little communication with Disabilities Services on campus. I heard of a case where a person with an ESA was threatened with eviction (they were of course also given the option to get rid of the dog in three days), despite having contacted both Disabilities and Housing numerous times prior to move-in to coordinate the situation.

There are also many, many, security/policy/safety concerns that I will not get in to here since they are not strictly relevant to whether or not you get housing in the first place. Do with this information what you will, I just wrote this for people who want an honest take and might be struggling to make a decision between schools. I also know there are similar issues at other UC's but can't personally speak on that.

Best,

AnonymousbecauseIcan’taffordOrangeCountyrentpricesanddontwanttopissHousingoff