Three UCLA students are pushing for housing reform in Westwood.

Undergraduate Students Association Council General Representative Brett Berndt, USAC Student Housing Liaison Gabriella Llaneta and fourth-year political science student Henry Houser created UCLA’s chapter of the Student Homes Coalition, a statewide organization dedicated to advocating for better student housing. The leaders said they created the chapter to centralize student housing concerns and advocate for affordability in Westwood.

“So many of our friends, and even I, live in terrible apartments that don’t get fixed up,” Houser said. “There’s a culture in Los Angeles where you don’t really talk about stuff like this, or you don’t really get involved. We wanted to bring that idea to UCLA.”

Berndt said it was especially important to start a chapter of SHC, which was founded in December 2022, because it felt like there was a lack of student housing advocacy on campus.

Rising costs near campus reflect a long-standing imbalance between the demand for and availability of housing, said Michael Manville, the chair of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs’ urban planning department.

“The demand is just very high, and the housing stock has not really grown to keep pace with it,” Manville said. “UCLA really did always start primarily as a commuter campus. … There wasn’t nearly as much of an expectation that students would live right there.”

Students have limited leverage and fewer protections as tenants because of the imbalance between housing supply and demand, Llaneta added.

“You’re in a dilapidated building that hasn’t been updated in years, with very little tenants’ rights or bargaining power,” Llaneta said.

Students, who often have little experience dealing with housing, are also navigating a rental market shaped by the region’s rapidly growing economy and long-standing shortage of new housing supply, Manville said.

To address the supply-driven imbalance, the coalition is advocating for the proper implementation of state housing policy like Senate Bill 79.

SB 79 – which was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October – allows for denser housing development near major transit stops than previously permitted. If applied in Westwood, the policy could increase the number of available units around campus.

“It would just kind of ultimately make things more affordable by just providing more housing,” said Berndt, a fourth-year political science student. “In the future, UCLA students could also see the benefit of these transit projects in conjunction with SB 79.”

While student leaders point to the policy as a potential solution, Manville said its effects remain uncertain and heavily depend on how it is implemented in LA.

“Take everything about 79 with a grain of salt, because it may be that LA manages to wangle some sort of exemption to it, or a watered-down version,” Manville said. “But if you look at the bill as written, UCLA is right within the catchment area that would allow a lot more housing to be built.”

Manville, though, added that he believes the policy could have a dramatic impact on Westwood if it gets implemented.

[Related: Professors react to new law, potential impact on LA housing, transport]

The group has also launched a housing survey to gather data derived from student accounts and experiences living in private apartments in Westwood, Berndt said. SHC plans to present the data to LA City Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, whose district includes Westwood, he added.

The survey is intended to reflect firsthand experiences from UCLA students like Tamara Cortes, a third-year communication student who said she dealt with maintenance concerns in a non-university affiliated Westwood apartment on Midvale Avenue.

The physical damage in her apartment caused her unease because she did not know when it would be fixed, she said. She added that she felt her apartment managers did not communicate how they would fix the issue, creating more anxiety for her and her roommates.

“The one issue was lack of transparency,” Cortes said. “We just came back and there was a hole in our wall, and you’re like, ‘Okay, great. When’s it going to be fixed? Can we use the bathroom?’”

Llaneta added that ultimately, SHC at UCLA aims to equip student renters with the resources to know their housing rights.

“We’re trying to put a little bit more out there so that people do have some kind of power to change their terrible living situations,” Houser said. “(They) don’t have to put up with the cycle of, ‘well, thank God I have an apartment.’’’