Rent Burden Calculator – pay us more ucsc

“Rent burden” is defined by housing scholars as spending more than 30% of wages on rent. Graduate students in Santa Cruz, one of the least affordable counties in the country, frequently spend as much as 50-60% of their wages on rent. Since December 2019, graduate students who serve as Teaching Assistants and Graduate Student Instructors have been on a wildcat strike for Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA)–a monthly additional payment of $1412 that will bring graduate students out of rent burden. For more graphs and data, check out this whitepaper put together by UC Berkeley students.

Here is what rent burden looks like for TAs (monthly salary $2434 before tax for 9 months):

Median monthly rent (med.)	Percentage of yearly salary going to rent
1BR – $2242	123%
One Room in 2BR – $1385	76%
One Room in 3BR – $1154	63%

Zillow Rental Index
Period: April 2018-Aug 2019

Calculate your rent burden below:

Mission

We are UCSC graduate students demanding a cost of living adjustment of $1,412 per month for every graduate student, regardless of residence, visa, documentation, employment or funding status, to bring us out of rent burden, without raising tuition or campus fees.

Why $1,412? We calculated what we would to need bring us out of rent burden relative to 2018-19 mean median monthly rent for a 3-bedroom split equally 3 ways in Santa Cruz County on Zillow. More detail about that calculation here.