The article touches on housing issues throughout Berkeley (not just near the campus). I live in north Berkeley (and I also grew up here in the hippie era), and I think the article does a good job of giving historical context and reflecting the many different conflicting perspectives of residents here.
Gift link.
And these same arguments play out everyday on NextDoor…Sometimes with quite a bit of bile involved.
I’ll be honest, if we weren’t local, I’d be very concerned about D attending UCB because of the housing situation. The university can’t provide it and the city’s housing market is nuts (if we didn’t already live here, there is no way we could now afford to move here). And there are some shady real estate folks taking advantage of the situation and jacking up rents for college students (there was just a FB discussion about this in one of the Cal parents groups).
The housing situation here for students is not great, but at least Berkeley is a city and it’s possible to move towards building more densely in the area adjacent to campus (as opposed to, for example, Santa Cruz). Maybe the blocks and blocks of new apartments currently going up near campus will alleviate some of the pressure.