With the spike in enrollment this semester, San José State students showed up ready to start their year, yet couldn’t find a place to live.
With campus housing at full capacity, hundreds on the waitlists and local rents hitting record-high prices, many students and parents were left scrambling for housing.
As enrollment increases and affordable housing remains scarce, students and parents are being left to seek high priced or unreliable alternatives off campus. For students with little to no extra help financially, this is a stressful situation.
Tarun Chawla, the parent of a first-year student, said his family did not find out about being waitlisted for campus housing until about mid-June, much later than they had expected.
“We’re usually on top of things but by the time we started looking for off campus alternatives, places like The Grad and Sparta505 were already full,” Chawla said.
He called multiple apartment offices every day and even considered booking an Airbnb during the first week of school.
“Prices were outrageous,” he said.
Eventually his daughter was able to get housing through a relet at The Grad.
“I was hesitant at first since it’s her first year, but she loves her roommates and has met lots of people”.
Aaron Bruce, a student who was waitlisted for campus housing, said “One of the biggest challenges I faced was the instability, not knowing if I’d have to commute or find a new place to live.”
“It’s important to have safe and easy access to housing so everyone can do their best,” Bruce said. “There should be more reliable options and alternatives for students who don’t get campus housing.”
Both The Grad and Sparta 505, which are two popular off-campus housing options for SJSU students, reported a significant increase in demand for housing over the summer.
Brandon Randow, a representative from The Grad, confirmed that interest was up this year.
“We did see an increase in demand,” Randow said. “Students and families are now aware that they need to search for and secure housing earlier than anticipated.”
Randow said that The Grad plans to increase its occupancy for 2026 to help ease the growing demand for housing.
Katelyn Williams, assistant manager at Sparta 505, said the leasing team experienced a surge of inquiries between the months of May and July, around the same time many students found out they had been waitlisted.
.“We were fully leased by July,” Williams said. “Because many students were notified later in the application season, we had a particularly large spike in interest in May, June, and July, at which point availability was already limited”.
Based on data from Zillow, only about 10% of homes in the San José metro area are considered “affordable” based on the median household income, according to an Aug. 30 analysis by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Although the number of “affordable” listings has technically doubled since last year, many of those homes are in poor conditions or have restrictions which make them inaccessible to most students, according to the same source.
The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San José is over $2,295 a month, a cost that is out of reach for most students, unless they split rooms or live further away from campus, according to data on Zillow,.
Earlier this month, Santa Clara County opened up two new affordable housing complexes, offering more than 500 new units, some as low as $200 a month, for qualifying low-income residents.
According to the City of San José, while these units primarily serve low-income families, seniors and those experiencing homelessness, their opening demonstrates growing investments towards affordable housing across the San José metro region. For students, these developments represent a step in the right direction and a sign that more support could be coming.
With very limited affordable housing options close to campus, students are being pushed into less conventional situations, like sharing small spaces with multiple roommates, commuting long distances, or having to manage working while schooling.
The university directs students to programs like SJSU Cares, which helps with emergency housing, food support, and financial aid.
The Spartan Daily reached out to University Housing Services for a comment on this year’s housing demand and future solutions but they did not respond in time for publication.
Although more affordable homes are slowly being added into the Bay Area, more specifically the San José region, many students remain caught in the middle, overpriced housing, waitlisted for dorms, but still trying to show up for class.
Bruce said challenges go beyond just rent, “I had to get a job, which made balancing school and work even harder…housing shouldn’t be this difficult, it just adds more stress to everything else we already have.”
