Dear Chancellor Larive, Campus Provost/EVC Kletzer, and President Napolitano,
Throughout this campaign, graduate students have given testimony of their experiences trying to survive in Santa Cruz on the inadequate wages and funding we receive from this institution.
We want to give voice to these anonymous accounts to illustrate to administration and faculty how dire our situation really is. We also hope that by sharing these unedited stories, graduate students will realize that they are not alone in these experiences:
“When I first started at UCSC (2014), my partner (who worked from home) and I were able to split the $1700 rent pretty evenly (slightly less than half my monthly paycheck), for a one bedroom converted “dairy” that had a single tiny wood-burning stove for heat, unsealed xypex concrete flooring that both generated dust as it was abraded (undoubtedly great for our lungs) and leaked pools of water when it rained, and floors that sloped towards non-functional drains. There were few options for housing available, and it wasn’t the greatest place, but we made it work we were happy enough to have a roof over our heads. I took TAships and GSRs over summer, because it was impossible to continue to afford 12 months of rent on my 9-month stipend without them. In summer 2017, we were kicked out so the landowner could remodel and charge higher rent for the next tenants.
Our next apartment was more likely to be defined as habitable by California state law. The only apparent flaw was the mold that always grew along the baseboard (despite our being on the second floor and never having spilled anything). The rent started at $1950, and the spot was out in Capitola, since nothing in town was approaching affordable for us. I began driving to campus – but the cost of gas, a parking permit, the lease, and the insurance began eating a larger chunk of my monthly income.
By the following year, our rent went up to $2250. I could no longer pretend I was able to contribute a fair share of it; the arithmetic stopped making sense; $1125 is 62% of my paycheck. For a few months, I stretched the remainder of my post-rent paycheck across my groceries, phone, and other expenses. Sometimes, it was enough – but sometimes it wasn’t. When the lease on my car ended, I did not lease a new one – saving the ~$400 a month that a car cost me and instead spending two hours daily with the Santa Cruz metro system. My stress about making ends meet while TAing and finishing my degree increased, and I started therapy to help cope.
Then, in early 2019, one of the units in the $2250/month/unit apartment building caught fire and burned down. My partner and I were alerted to the fire when the neighbors began screaming and everyone was rushing up and down the stairs. No smoke alarms went off across the four units in the building. My first thought as I scrambled to leave was to grab the stack of student essays I had been grading. So much for concept that money could buy us safe housing. Thankfully, our unit did not burn down (two other units were just blackened frames), but the building was condemned and everything smelled of acrid burned plastic. Asbestos was released. Our renters insurance covered us in some ways as we processed what had happened.
For a month, we were homeless. My partner and I relied on our friends in the area – wonderful people who took us in while we searched for new housing in Santa Cruz. We attended open houses for units that smelled like piss and grew mold. We were shown a converted garage and basement unit with windows in only one room. We scoured craigslist and the UCSC community rentals webpage and made numerous calls to landowners and rental agencies. We spoke with slug support and family student housing, who offered me (and only me) a temporary 1-2 week stay, and handed me printed list of the places we’d already been calling with a shrug. “The market here is bad.” Thanks, but you forgot the qualifier that it’s only bad *if you can’t afford it.*
After a month, we made the decision to move to the location of my partner’s work – Santa Barbara – because somehow the rental market is better here. I am eternally grateful to my advisor and committee for supporting me as I finish my PhD remotely. But really – none of this should happen. I shouldn’t have to choose between safe housing and affording my basic needs. Moving 250 miles away to another high-cost-of-living area shouldn’t be a better choice than continuing to live in Santa Cruz.
UCSC graduate students desperately need a Cost of Living Adjustment. I consider myself fairly lucky – having a supportive partner meant I could get through the lean periods, and my advisor always helped me with summertime GSR positions and supported my teaching efforts over summer. But the stress of “making it work” was crushing, and my story is by no means the only one or the even particularly severe. Graduate students need a solution now. Future housing is a solution in the future, and frankly I think it’s ridiculous to even call it a solution when you compare a 9-month $1800 stipend ($16,200) to the 12-month $1200 grad student housing lease ($14,400). Even if you are lucky enough to have a 12-month stipend, grad housing is 67% of your income.
So, there’s only one thing that will prevent students (like me) from making impossible decisions about which of their basic needs they’d like met: a COLA, now.
Again, for the people in the back: **There’s only one thing that will prevent students from making impossible decisions about which of their basic needs they’d like met: a COLA, now.**”
These stories aren’t novel or surprising to most of us. And they shouldn’t be surprising to administration, who have completed multiple assessments of graduate student wellbeing. Administrators have ignored and dismissed their own findings, which demonstrate that it is impossible to survive on our stipends in Santa Cruz. We will not be ignored. We will not be dismissed. We will not wait. We will not submit.
