UC Berkeley has historically had the lowest rate of students in housing of the University of California campuses, hosting just 22% of its undergraduate population a decade ago, compared to an average of 38% systemwide.

The school only began to guarantee housing for freshmen during the 2023-2024 academic year, after a yearslong effort to expand campus housing supply, spearheaded by former Chancellor Carol Christ. One of the projects she helped get off the ground was Heumann House, the university’s 1,100-bed apartment-style housing project set to open next fall.

The development has been controversial on campus and has been decades in the making. It sits on the former site of People’s Park, where students and neighbors fought the university’s efforts to build housing since it acquired the land in the late 1960s.

Storage containers surround the perimeter of People’s Park in Berkeley, California, on June 6, 2024. The California Supreme Court ruled in favor of UC Berkeley’s plans to develop the park into student housing. (Brontë Wittpenn/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

The university had planned to develop student housing before running out of money. In 1969, residents planted trees and turned it into a park. When the university tried to reclaim the land, it sparked major protests and clashes between local police and park supporters.

For decades, the plot remained mostly undeveloped, serving as a gathering place for students and activists, and a long-standing homeless encampment before a state Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for the university to build. The campus quietly broke ground on its new housing in 2024.

Heumann House, named for disability rights leader Judith Heumann, adds to the campus’s supply of apartment-style housing filled by many transfer students. In 2024, Berkeley opened Anchor House, which features around 800 beds in similar units. Together, the projects bring the campus’s housing capacity to 33% of its student population.

The Bancroft-Fulton Student Housing project, the other new development expected in 2028, will add another 1,600 dorm-style beds.