College students are gearing up to head back to campus, but for many in the Bay Area, finding a place to live has become a significant challenge.<\/p>\n
San Jose State University continues to be a popular college with increasing enrollment every year. It\u2019s also in the heart of Silicon Valley, one of the most expensive places to live in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like \u2018The Hunger Games,\u2019\u201d San Jose State student Kyla Jimenez said. \u201cThat’s the best way I can describe it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kyla is a business major at San Jose State. Her twin Ren is studying communications at nearby Santa Clara University. They can\u2019t find an affordable place to live in downtown San Jose.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll kind of be in competition with families and other people that are just looking for housing as well,\u201d Kyla said. \u201cWe’re also in competition with people that are looking in groups of like five or they’re willing to offer more than the asking price.”<\/p>\n
Kyla and Ren aren\u2019t alone. Several other students expressed the same anxiety.<\/p>\n
Kyla and Ren\u2019s mom is a single parent in Fairfield, so the twins rely on financial aid to pay tuition and housing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been touring a lot of two-bedrooms, a lot of three-bedrooms, and a lot of them are just super filthy, like disgusting almost,\u201d Ren said. \u201cA lot of mold is painted over.\u201d<\/p>\n
On-campus housing is not an option for Kyla. It costs about $9,000 to $10,000 a semester at the campus village, with a meal plan. San Jose State said that price is actually not too bad.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know this is an expensive housing market,\u201d San Jose State spokesperson Michelle Smith McDonald said. \u201cWe are providing one of the best values in downtown in terms of all the things that students get in residential housing.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a family with little income, the twins said they\u2019re forced to look elsewhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just super uncertain,\u201d Kyla said. \u201cI feel like the only word to describe it is cooked. I feel like we\u2019re cooked. We\u2019ve been looking since March.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ren said they\u2019ve been on edge as they constantly search for a place.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn our phones, on our laptops, checking our emails every day seeing if landlords are even considering our application,\u201d she said. \u201cA lot of it is just disappointment after disappointment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"College students are gearing up to head back to campus, but for many in the Bay Area, finding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[6726,14500,88,90,89],"class_list":["post-418887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-bay-area-housing","tag-making-it-in-the-bay","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}