After years of delays, Ventura College is inching closer to building affordable student housing on campus, and now Moorpark College is aiming to follow suit.
Ventura College won a $63 million competitive state grant in 2022 to build a dormitory for low-income students. The college’s plan was to open the new housing in the fall of 2025, but the money was cut from the state budget, then reinstated, and four years after the grant was awarded, the dormitory remains unbuilt.
Ventura College officials now believe their grant money is secure, and they’re moving ahead with plans for a dorm with room for 290 students in 114 units. The site on campus sits in a parking lot along Telegraph Road near Campus Drive, and officials have submitted plans to the state
agency responsible for reviewing designs for public schools, community colleges and state buildings.
Once the state approves those plans, the project can go to the Ventura County Community College District board for final approval, and then out to bid for a contractor to build it. The goal is to have the dorm complete and students moved in by the fall of 2028, Ventura College President Luca Lewis said in an email interview.
In addition to the funding delays, the project's timetable was pushed back because the site was changed. The original location was an empty lot where a campus pool used to be, but that proved unsuitable due to "geotechnical constraints," Lewis said.
Costs have risen since the dorm was first planned, and the budget is now $78.5 million, Lewis said. In addition to the $63 million state grant, the college will use a $3 million grant from the county of Ventura and is asking the state for another $12.5 million.
Moorpark College is a couple of years behind Ventura College's schedule but also wants to build on-campus housing for students who can't afford rent in the area. In 2022, when Ventura College was awarded the $63 million grant to build its housing, Moorpark College won a $250,000 grant to study the idea of a dorm on its campus. The college has written up a plan for a dorm on empty land on a hillside near the gymnasium.
Moorpark College has submitted an application for a $66 million state grant, which would pay for all but $3 million of the planned dorm. Moorpark College President Julius Sokenu said that if the college wins the grant it plans to build housing for about 200 students. He said he expects to learn in the spring whether or not Moorpark College will get the money.
"It's a very competitive grant," Sokenu said. "We are conscious of the fact that we already have one project in our county, and we will be competing against colleges that don't have another one in their county, so we know in some ways it's a long shot."
If Moorpark College wins the construction grant, it hopes to start the project in 2028 and have it finished in 2030, Sokenu said.
The third community college in Ventura County, Oxnard College, also won a $250,000 planning grant for student housing, but it was passed over when the state awarded the grants to actually build the housing.
'We know there's demand'
Though its common at four-year universities, on-campus housing is rare at community colleges. Only 18 of California's 116 community colleges have housing for students on campus, according to the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office.
The state is funding community college dorms because there's a growing sense that rent is out of reach for many students. That's particularly true in Ventura County. Last year, the rent for the average one-bedroom apartment countywide was $2,409, according to an annual landlord survey by the real estate firm Dyer Sheehan.
The campus housing in both Ventura and Moorpark will be offered at below-market rents to students who qualify based on their incomes. The dorms will have both single and double-occupancy units along with shared kitchens and other common spaces.
Moorpark College plans to charge about $800 per month per person to share a double room, $900 per month for a single room and $1,000 a month for larger single-occupancy studio unit, according to its grant application. The average one-bedroom apartment in Moorpark rented for $2,469 last year, according to the Dyer Sheehan report.
Moorpark College conducted a student survey a few years ago that found that 25% of students experienced food insecurity at some point during the school year and 9% said they had skipped meals because they couldn't afford them.
"For housing, quite a lot of our students are couch-surfing," Sokenu said. "We know there's demand for this. We know there are benefits to housing, to making sure students have housing security. We know this will help with retention, with helping them to stay in school."
Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tbiasotti@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation's Fund to Support Local Journalism.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Ventura, Moorpark colleges plan campus dorms
