Fight over USC Housing Escalates

...And once in a great while, someone stops to think of the displaced people who live all around the Univerity.

When my father taught at USC in the 1960s, it campus was in the process of expanding to its present configuration. My father and one other professor shared an entire single family residence for their office while awaiting their permanent offices to be built.

Most definitely. Finally somebody gets it right. The Real gentrification is going on around on the periphery of the central downtown area and not downtown within the freeways in the city center..

How are the people around thee school displaced? Unless I'm missing something, the school can't forcibly remove anyone like the government could. At worst, the school offers people a price for their property, and they can choose to accept or not.

Conquest Student Housing must be owned by a bunch of really sleazy people, not much less unethical or diabolical than the Mafia.

If I lived in an apartment owned by Conquest, I'd have a very queasy, creepy feeling right now.

Actually USC pioneered the use of eminent domain by a non-public entity, when expanding to the boundaries it now has. There was a fascinating "official" history of USC done I think for the 75th anniversary with some juicy stuff. When I was a student (circa 1981-1987) the only copy that hadn't vanished or was non-circulating was in the Education Library.

How to gentrify an area:

1. Expand a school, office complex, or similar upper-end operation out into poor neighborhoods, leading to demolition of existing apartments and houses.

2. The expanding org can buy up a few residences as temporary housing for faculty or management during the build out.

3. With the supply of units reduced, and demand increased due to expansion, supply of housing declines, while demand rises. Landlords will raise rents, causing established, working-class tenants to move out or be evicted.

4. Gentrification effect is achieved by reducing the number of poor people in an area.

5. Push for political project to keep poor people in the area by building affordable housing. Tear down an existing "blight" and rebuilt it as lower density "affordable." Set the price of the "affordable housing" higher than existing rents in the cheap local apartments.

6. Harass local residents with a "gang injunction" or with regulations that are anti-senior-citizen. This creates divisions between new gentry residents, and older ethnic residents. Have cops officially side with the new, wealthier residents.

7. Small mom and pop shops, dependent on a local clientele who may not have a car, face lean years, as wealthier people with cars spend their money elsewhere. Ethnic businesses decline. Give credits or variances to businesses that invest in this "neglected" area.

How to gentrify an area:

Or better-educated folks, the type who tend to have some dough, can head out to the suburbs or the westside, as the people left behind whine and mutter: "Racism! no jobs for us!, high unemployment!, too much crime!, racism!, no opportunities! Help us! Help us!"

Not to worry everyone, Conquest and Urban Partners will be out of the student housing market in the next few years, and the locals will have the neighborhood back. USC just announced its master plan to develop enough student housing on its own land so that all students have a place to live (without resulting in an invasion of the outside community). This will likely give companies like Conquest and Urban Partners the boot. USC will be able to provide enough housing for all students because they shrunk their last two freshman classes to smaller size to try and become a more exclusive university. Also, USC has a no-build restriction on the 20 acre University Village parcel just north of campus that expires in January 2011. They will start building all this student housing in 2011, and once it's finished Conquest and Urban won't be able to compete with 8.5 month leases and below market rents (USC operates their housing system on a non profit policy). Here is the link to the USC master plan if you want to find out more: www.usc.edu/masterplan.

Why are these companies fighting each other to enter such a terrible market? I am an MRED student at USC right now studing real estate, and there is no shortage of housing. I can walk into the office of any housing provider and sign a lease right now if I want to. CDI Management is offering incentives, Conquest is offering 2 months rent for free just to sign a lease! Vacancy signes are everywhere. They are so desperate. Most people are living downtown in the great new Palmer buildings as well as the conversion buildings.

My friend Bill was one of the guys sleeping out. He said there were about 20-30 groups sleeping outstide, and they all wanted to be in the most popular Conquest building. It turned out at 8am that there were only 2 units left in that building, so Conquest jacked up the rent on those 2 units, and tried to encourage people to sign leases in their other buildings. But I was in the office 2 days after the sleep out, and they were showing me availabilities in each of their buildings except for 1. And they were offering huge rent concessions. See the problem for landlords Eric, is that there is little depth to the market. And while they may be able to lease up some units, there is clearly no depth of demand in this area. They may have been able to get away with raising rents on a few units as students who slept out on the street weren't just going to walk away without signing an apartment. But that has certainly caught up with them.

Eric, I was just checking out the Conquest website, and check out what I found in their FAQ section:

Why were people sleeping outside the Conquest office the night before leasing began? Are all Conquest apartments now leased up?

We still have plenty of availability for the 2008-2009 school year in 18 of our 19 buildings (including Tuscany). The reason students sleep outside for Conquest apartments is because they have very specific preferences when it comes to where they want to live and what apartment type they want. For instance, one girl in line on March 1st, only wanted a top floor 1BR apartment at Tuscany facing an interior courtyard. If she didn't get that specific apartment type, she was going to live in Downtown LA. Since there are only two top floor 1BR apartments facing interior courtyards at Tuscany, she decided to camp out to guarantee that she would get that type of apartment.

Some students are fully committed to doing whatever it takes to secure the specific apartment they want. We find that students sleep out the night before we open to the public on both of our campuses (USC and UC Santa Barbara), however these crowds have never resulted in a sellout of any building. We always end up having availability for several months after opening to the public.

Studios, 1BR, and 3BR apartments became available to the public on March 1st, 2008, and on that day we leased 39 out of the 103 available Studio, 1BR, and 3BR apartments.

2BR apartments became available on March 8th, 2008, and on that day we leased 13 out of the 54 available 2BR apartments.

Plus the freshman class at USC keeps getting smaller. When I graduated a few years ago my class was way over 3000 kids and now my sister is going there next year and she said theres only about 2500 kids in the freshman class.

Shes a transfer so we found her an apt. downtown in a condo that someone was renting out. She's not alone, lots of her friends are moving Downtown because the buildings rock (new glass skyscrapers). And they are super cheap because all the people that bought or built there are getting screwed so they are just renting out the units that they can't sell- they have so many empty units that they are just practically giving them away.

I've been reading a lot of the comments above, and I think they are all relevant to what's happening in the USC area. I just signed a lease at City Park Apartments for a very affordable price ($1,850) for a large 2BR/2BA apartment. We get two, gated, underground parking spaces included in rent as well. I think great prices like this are available now b/c of the factors people are mentioning above (USC providing more housing, more downtown housing, smaller student body, etc). If any students are reading this, here are the prices for City Park (I'm told there are still a lot of apts available). 1BR/1BA for $1,200, 2BR/2BA for $1,850, and 3BR/2BA for $2,500. Each apartment comes with a parking space per bedroom.

I work for a developer that looked at doing a giant mixed use student housing project on Figueroa right by USC. It was a very exciting opportunity (despite the really expensive land cost of about $300/foot). We did lots of research and found out about the upcoming USC master plan. We decided to pull out of the deal because we determined that there will not be a need for private sector student housing at USC within 5 years. If USC is going to build enough campus-owned housing to provide a spot for each student, on 9 month leases at below market rents, how can we compete with that? After reading all the comments above, I'm so glad I advised my company to back out of the deal. I probably would have been fired in a couple years once the project failed!

I've been reading a lot of the comments above. While these people present a good point about the USC Master Plan coming up, people are forgetting to mention that there has already been a lot of development over the last few years, bringing supply in line with demand. USC built Parkside on campus, allowing them to guarante housing for both freshman and sophomores. Conquest built Tuscany, Palisades 1 and 2, Abbey Road, The Pallazo. This is the reason why prices are already lower than the past, and there are still vacancies at this time of year.