The 11-story Heumann House is under construction at the former People’s Park site at UC Berkeley on Monday. The housing is expected to open in fall 2027, allowing the university to guarantee on-campus housing for both freshman and sophomores for the first time.
Brontë Wittpenn/S.F. ChronicleUC Berkeley will guarantee two years of on-campus housing to all incoming freshmen starting this fall, expanding beyond its previous first-year guarantee.New construction projects, including an 11-story apartment complex and a 23-story dorm, will increase the university’s housing capacity to 12,400 beds by 2028.Transfer students will receive a one-year housing guarantee, with options including a new complex that opened in 2024.
UC Berkeley will guarantee two years of on-campus housing to all freshmen, starting with the class entering this fall, campus housing officials say — marking a major step for a university that has long struggled to house its students.
Just a decade ago, UC Berkeley had the worst housing availability among the nine UC undergraduate campuses, with beds for just 22% of its undergrads compared to a 38% average systemwide, officials said. A wave of new dorm and apartment construction is helping close that gap.
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One of those projects, an 11-story, 1,100-bed apartment style complex on the once-embattled site of People’s Park, will open in fall 2027, helping increase the university’s housing capacity from 29% currently to 33% of its 33,000 undergrads and allowing it to expand its housing guarantee beyond first-year students to include returning sophomores. Transfer students will be guaranteed one year of housing, mostly in a separate complex that opened in 2024.
The new housing will offer traditional dorm rooms with two-person occupancy and a meal plan, or university-owned apartment-style units. Though the university describes its student housing as “on-campus,” most of it is mixed into the dense residential and commercial neighborhoods outside the campus gates.
Heumann House will provide 1,100 units of apartment-style housing to UC Berkeley students starting in fall 2027.
Brontë Wittpenn/S.F. Chronicle
“Two years of guaranteed housing for every incoming first-year student is transformative for our student experience,” Chancellor Rich Lyons said in a press release last week. “It gives students the foundation they need — a place to live, a community to be part of and the stability that supports their well-being, allowing them to fully engage in their education and in the life of this university.”
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The guarantee hinges on completion of Heumann House, an apartment-style building just off Telegraph Avenue and five blocks south of Sather Gate, the main entrance to campus. Named after disability rights activist Judith Heumann, it is on the footprint of People’s Park, historic home of the Berkeley non-student counterculture that was the subject of a long legal battle until a 2024 state Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for the project to move forward. Heumann House is on track for opening next fall to undergrads in the sophomore to senior classes.
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The university also broke ground this month on a 23-story development of traditional dorm rooms called Bancroft-Fulton Student Housing, on the western edge of campus. That project, which will be the tallest building in downtown Berkeley and only 30 feet shorter than Sather Tower, will offer 1,600 beds and is expected to be ready for the fall 2028 semester.
These two major housing projects add to Anchor House, the UC system’s first housing built specifically for transfer students, which opened in 2024, with 800 beds. The two new buildings will push the university’s housing capacity to 12,400 beds.
Another housing complex, on Channing Way, is working its way through the planning process and could ultimately supply another 2,000 beds and bring the bed-to-student ratio about 44%.
Construction for the 11-story Heumann House continues at the former People’s Park site at UC Berkeley on Monday.
Brontë Wittpenn/S.F. Chronicle
“Living on campus is about far more than proximity to campus — it’s about living in a thriving, dynamic community that supports one’s growth and development,” said Stephen C. Sutton, vice chancellor for student affairs.
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Pushing for more student housing was a top priority of Carol Christ during her tenure as chancellor from 2017 to 2024. In the 2023-24 academic year, the university guaranteed housing to all freshmen for the first time. According to Lindsey Michels, critical communications manager for student affairs communications, the two-year housing guarantee for incoming students is the first offer of its kind in the “institutional memory” of the student housing office at UC Berkeley.
“When students live in our residential communities, they gain daily access to peers, faculty and support services that strengthen learning, belonging and well-being,” Sutton said. “Expanding our housing portfolio is essential to ensuring more students can benefit from this experience and fully participate in campus life.”