Attorneys for the UC Regents, the City of Santa Cruz and the County of Santa Cruz enter a Santa Cruz County Superior Court hearing about UCSC’s 2021 Long Range Development Plan on June 13. (Nik Altenberg — Santa Cruz Local)
Update Friday, Aug. 30: At an Aug. 29 hearing, an environmental group whose lawsuit was consolidated with the city and county’s cases dropped all remaining claims in this case that were not addressed by the Aug. 26 ruling. Plaintiffs from the city and county of Santa Cruz and the environmental group have until Oct. 1 to submit a proposed judgment. Once approved, the UC Regents could weigh an appeal.
Scott Hernandez-Jason, a spokesman for UC Santa Cruz, called the 2021 Long Range Development Plan “well thought-out.” He said university leaders are “disappointed with the court’s ruling and are determining our next steps.”
SANTA CRUZ >> UC Santa Cruz’s plan to add more than 8,000 students by 2040 failed to fully account for the impacts that growth would have on regional housing, water use, wildlife and evacuation routes, a judge ruled Monday.
The City and County of Santa Cruz sued the UC Regents in 2022, alleging that the environmental analysis portion of UCSC’s 2021 Long Range Development Plan was insufficient. Santa Cruz County Superior Judge Timothy Schmal’s ruling in the city and county’s favor essentially invalidates the 2021 LRDP, though university attorneys are expected to appeal the ruling.
A long range development plan, or LRDP, is a road map for building out the campus and university land off campus to accommodate more students.
There were about 19,800 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in UCSC last year. The 2021 LRDP anticipates up to 28,000 students by 2040. The plan also includes a goal of providing 8,500 new beds for students on campus and 550 new housing units for faculty and staff.
Monday’s court ruling against the university could mean that university leaders are beholden to the 19,500 student enrollment limit set by the previous LRDP. An Aug. 29 hearing could illuminate whether university leaders can continue to operate under the 2021 plan and how the environmental report could be fixed or rewritten.
UCSC spokesman Scott Hernandez-Jason and attorneys for the UC did not respond to requests for comment this week.
The ruling
The ruling essentially said the university’s environmental report did not sufficiently address issues related to regional housing, water demand and wildfire evacuation routes. The ruling sided with the plaintiffs’ claims that:
- The LRDP’s plan to house 100% of new students on campus was a goal, not a concrete plan, and it wasn’t properly analyzed as a mitigation measure.
- The LRDP did not account for the effects of increased enrollment on a potential evacuation during a wildfire. Instead, it relied on “a successful campus evacuation during the pandemic when the campus population was greatly reduced,” Schmal wrote.
- The LRDP incorrectly assumed that the City of Santa Cruz must provide water to the north campus, outside of city boundaries, without needing the approval of the Local Agency Formation Commission.
Housing, wildfire challenges
Don Stevens of Habitat and Watershed Caretakers, the environmental group that first sued over the university’s LRDP in 2021, said he was “thrilled” about Monday’s ruling.
“There are almost 10,000 students who rent off campus,” Stevens said. Enrolling more than 8,000 additional students “would have been disastrous for the housing market. If you’re a landlord it would have been great, but from the standpoint of affordability, for just people who want to rent, it’s a great ruling.”
University leaders have said the plan is to house all additional students on campus, but they also relied on the assumption that they could make that happen in the plan’s analysis. Stevens said it’s not realistic because many students rent off campus where they can find cheaper rooms.
For the 2024-2025 school year, rooms in apartments on campus will rent for from $1,402 to $2,058 per month without a meal plan. The cheapest option available to a student in a dorm is $1,704 per month to share a room with four other students. Students in dorms are required to purchase a campus meal plan.
“We’re happy that the courts saw that the [Environmental Impact Report] analysis of the LRDP was inadequate, in particular about the assumption that they’re going to house 100% of new students on campus,” said Holly Whatley, an attorney representing the City of Santa Cruz in the case.
Evacuations during a potential wildfire also remained unresolved. At a June 13 hearing in the same case, Santa Cruz County Assistant Counsel Justin Graham essentially said that residents near the campus would face snarled roads if there were a fire.
“The residents of Bonny Doon would likely make use of Empire Grade to evacuate a wildfire. There’s no analysis of the evacuation of an additional 50%-odd growth of the campus population on that evacuation route for the residents of Bonny Doon,” Graham said at the June hearing.
During the CZU Lightning Complex Fire in August 2020, the campus was evacuated. Schmal questioned the university’s reference to that successful evacuation as unrepresentative, given that many students were not on campus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The number of students on campus in August of 2020 would be exponentially fewer than” a fully occupied campus with increased enrollment, Schmal said.
Monday’s ruling indicated that a potential fire evacuation through Empire Grade would be disastrous.
Read more
- UC Santa Cruz adds off-campus housing as lawsuits drag on — Aug. 15, 2024
- Union sues UC over student housing construction contract — Aug. 13, 2024
- 300 Ingalls Alley, Delaware Addition Phase II — Last updated April 2024
- UC Santa Cruz housing projects — Last updated September 2023
- Potential lawsuit could tie UCSC growth to campus housing — Jan. 14, 2022
- Animal habitat lawsuit stalls UCSC housing projects — June 13, 2022
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Nik Altenberg is a copy editor and fact checker at Santa Cruz Local. Altenberg grew up in Santa Cruz and holds a bachelor’s degree in Latin American and Latinx Studies from UC Santa Cruz.
