Heading into his first semester this fall at Feather River College, Conor Robinson considered camping in a tent after struggling to find a 1-bedroom apartment he could afford. 

Larissa Griffith found free housing her first semester, but it came with a catch: She was on call, 24 hours a day, including holidays, at her landlord’s farm. 

In the town of Quincy, population 1,580, housing options are sparse for students in this rural community in Northern California. Demand has also grown, especially after the 2021 Dixie Fire, which tore through nearly a million acres of Sierra Nevada mountains and forest — about the size of Rhode Island — and destroyed hundreds of homes across the surrounding Plumas County.

Right after the fire, the state granted the college over $500,000 from the state to design solutions for the worsening student housing crisis, but it was a kind of “false hope,” said Carlie McCarthy, the college’s vice president of student services.

Twice, the school submitted its plans — a $74 million proposal to build over 120 beds for students — and each time, the state Legislature was unable to fund it. The state has promised to help community colleges build housing for their students, but after committing funds to 19 other community college housing projects, the state Legislature tried to delay spending the money in order to close a multi-billion dollar budget deficit. Most of those projects are still moving forward through a new financing mechanism, but the Legislature has effectively run out of money for any other projects.

Feather River College is one of 35 housing proposals that remain in limbo, with no additional state funding available. Those projects include a proposal from Mendocino College, where massive wildfires destroyed hundreds of homes in a community similar to Quincy and Santa Monica College, which submitted its proposal before the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles.

Santa Monica College is still gathering data about the scope of the fires’ impact on students, but early estimates based on students’ addresses show that around 600 Santa Monica College students were living in an evacuation zone or within areas directly impacted by those fires, said Susan Fila, who oversees students’ health and wellbeing at the college. 

College presidents across the state say the new housing projects are a long-term solution to wildfire recovery and to the state’s enduring affordability crisis, which has hit community college students hard. In study after study, researchers have found that around 20% of California community college students experience homelessness at some point over the course of a year, and many more struggle to pay rent. 

The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, which oversees the state’s 116 community colleges, is asking for $1.1 billion in bond money from the state Legislature this year for affordable housing projects, though those dollars would fund just half of the outstanding proposals. The governor has until July 1 to finalize the 2025-26 budget. 

Other competing budget priorities, such as LA wildfires recovery, could take precedence over affordable housing, said Wrenna Finche, the vice president of administrative services at Ohlone College in Fremont, which has failed to secure state funding for two different affordable housing proposals for its Bay Area campuses. “I wouldn’t expect a lot of movement on it this year.”

Fighting for student housing

A few of California’s rural community colleges have offered housing for decades, mostly as a means to mitigate long commutes to school. In Plumas County, some students drive over an hour — on a good day —  just to make it to Feather River College. Snowstorms and rock slides frequently close mountain roads, delaying travel even more. 

Many community colleges were designed for students who live with their parents and commute to school, but those demographics are changing. Fewer students between the ages of 18 and 22 are enrolling in community college, and those who do enroll often live independently. As a result, demand for housing has grown all across the state, including in coastal areas and in other rural regions, such as the Imperial Valley. 

Robinson is 36 and enrolled at Feather River College after making a career change. He’s studying ecosystem restoration and applied fire management, the only such program in the state, and wants to continue working on prescribed burns after graduation.

Griffith, 20, is a former foster youth. She moved from the Sacramento area to Quincy in order to follow her dream of running a dude ranch. Feather River College is the only school in the state to offer a bachelor’s degree program in equine and ranch management.

The campus includes horse stables, a fish hatchery and other nods to the Plumas County economy, which relies heavily on logging and outdoor recreation. To meet the needs of students like Robinson and Griffith, the college has multiple dormitories with a total capacity of about 260 students. Unlike the rest of campus, where buildings are carefully designed to blend with the  surrounding forest, most of the dorms are purely utilitarian. The buildings are bare, white rectangles, except for a few hints of student life. Cowboy boots and spurs sit outside many doorways; a dirt trail connects the dormitories to class.

Rent is around $500 a month, including utilities. Signups for the upcoming fall semester opened on Feb. 3, but two days later, registration was already full, said Kevin Trutna, the college president. By putting three beds in a single room, the college can house over 300 people, but even then, there’s a waitlist. This semester, he said over 80 students failed to get a campus housing spot.

“As a former foster youth, it’s sink or swim,” said Griffith, who received one of the coveted housing spots in a bedroom she shares with an equine studies major. “Anything I get, I had to fight for.” 

By combining four different state and federal grants, plus a private scholarship, she receives more than $20,000 this year in financial aid, which is more than enough to cover the monthly rent. The housing is a significant upgrade, she said, especially compared to her foster home and the previous “free” housing arrangement.

Robinson wasn’t interested in living in a shared dormitory, which is the only campus housing available, so he found a mobile home off-campus this semester. 

“I didn’t feel like I had a choice but to accept the one place that I had found, even though it wasn’t ideal,” he said. 

After moving in, he spent hours shampooing the carpets and cleaning up his unit to make it livable, but he said he’s still worried it may be unsafe because of lingering mold and lack of ventilation for the stove. He pays $850 a month, but the landlord wants to move in at the end of April, so he’ll need to find a new place soon. 

Finding housing alternatives through RV parks and bond dollars

After Trutna realized the state was unlikely to fund the Feather River College’s next housing development, he called Dayne Lewis, the owner of a local RV park that abuts the campus, to see if the park had additional capacity. Out of the park’s 31 RVs, Lewis said roughly half are students.

“I would fill this place completely with students but the timing doesn’t always work out,” he said. Since the Dixie and North Complex fires tore through Plumas County, many state and federal contractors have moved to Quincy, the largest city in the county, to work on rebuilding the region. Those contractors now compete with students for temporary housing, he said.

Antelope Valley College in Lancaster purchased a $9 million plot of land for its proposed housing project, but it now sits empty since state funding fell through, said Jennifer Zellet, the college president. Like administrators at Ohlone College and Santa Monica College, Zellet said she’s exploring a “public-private partnership,” in which a local nonprofit builds and operates a housing development on that land using a portion of regional bond dollars. 

These partnerships are a popular but imperfect solution. In Long Beach, where the community college proposed building over 240 units, President Mike Muñoz said he won’t resort to a public-private partnership. Because housing would be run by a private entity, not a college, he said it’s common for these kinds of projects to charge students higher rent. Instead, he said the college plans to rely entirely on local bond dollars, even if that means delays on other campus projects that need bond money, such as a new training center for police officers and firefighters. 

Rural parts of the state, such as Plumas and Mendocino counties, have fewer alternatives. The projects are often smaller since there are fewer residents, and as a result, the profit margins are thin, said Mendocino College President Timothy Karas. Both Trutna, the president of Feather River College, and Karas say that they have no bond dollars available.

CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics. ​​

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