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The 11-story Heumann House is under construction at the former People\u2019s 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\u00a0first time.<\/p>\n
Bront\u00eb 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
UC Berkeley will guarantee two years of on-campus housing to all freshmen, starting with the class entering this fall, campus housing officials say\u00a0\u2014 marking a major step for a university that has long struggled to house its students.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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One of those projects, an 11-story, 1,100-bed apartment style complex on the once-embattled site of People\u2019s Park<\/a>, will open in fall 2027, helping increase the university\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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 \u201con-campus,\u201d most of it is mixed into the dense residential and commercial\u00a0 neighborhoods outside the campus gates.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Heumann House will provide 1,100 units of apartment-style housing to UC Berkeley students starting in fall 2027.<\/p>\n Bront\u00eb Wittpenn\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n \u201cTwo years of guaranteed housing for every incoming first-year student is transformative for our student experience,\u201d Chancellor Rich Lyons said in a press release last week. \u201cIt gives students the foundation they need\u00a0\u2014 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.\u201d<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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<\/a> 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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n 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. <\/a>That project, which will be the tallest building in downtown Berkeley and only 30 feet shorter than Sather Tower<\/a>, will offer 1,600 beds and is expected to be ready for the fall 2028 semester.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n