Long Beach City College will soon begin construction on a 431-bed student housing facility, part of a larger effort to make affordable housing widely available to city residents and students.
The facility will be built on the Liberal Arts Campus adjacent to Veterans Memorial Stadium (also set for major upgrades) and will include studio, single- and double-bed units, lounge and study spaces, and shared kitchen and laundry rooms. Preparation on the site has already begun, and construction is expected to finish in fall 2028. The $127 million project is funded by measures LB and AC, voter-approved bond issues that support campus revitalization.
The project represents “the first time in Long Beach City College’s nearly 100-year history [that] students will have the opportunity to live and learn on campus,” Uduak-Joe Ntuk, president of the LBCC board of trustees, said in a press release.
Housing — and the lack of it — has become a central issue at LBCC, where nearly 12% of students who responded to a recent survey reported experiencing homelessness in the last year. Close to 800 students said they were housing insecure; 80 said they slept in their vehicles.
Many students are balancing studies with work and family obligations, and housing adds yet another potential barrier to education, the college said in a statement.
“Community colleges have traditionally been thought of as commuter campuses, but the students we serve today face very different circumstances,” Mike Muñoz, LBCC superintendent-president, said in a press release.
In response, LBCC is taking a multi-pronged approach to provide stability and address evolving student needs. Affordable, on-campus housing is one of the first steps.
In addition to the several hundred beds slated for the Liberal Arts Campus, the college is also building a few dozen affordable housing units in North Long Beach, expected to be completed in fall 2029, a year after the first housing complex opens.
Details on eligibility requirements, rental rates and placement criteria are still in development for each project (which may have different cost structures), said LBCC spokesperson Stacey Toda. The college has not yet decided whether units will be offered at no cost or through a specific subsidy program, she added. Yet affordability is a priority, she said.
The college has already made attempts to address housing instability, particularly through its safe parking program, which began in 2021 and allows students to sleep in their cars on campus with the protection of security and access to amenities including showers, electricity and Wi-Fi.
Edgar Rosales Jr. used the safe parking program when he first started at LBCC, and since then, he’s led work to amplify the voices of unhoused and low-income students at the college, even creating a club, Voz, with that mission.
Rosales said the new housing projects could change the lives of hundreds of students by providing a direct path to housing while reducing the money students must spend to commute.
Rosales has housing now; the college helped him secure a place nearly a year ago. But there was a time when he couldn’t imagine a way out. “I thought I was going to live and die in my car,” he said.
He has worked to make sure other students know they have options and pushed the college to prioritize housing, he said. He hopes the new developments will make housing assistance less of a “taboo subject.”
“It’s an incredible feeling to know that people aren’t going to suffer like I did,” he said.