The Lumberjack



Students Serving The Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community Since 1929

Tag: AMCAL

  • Letter to the editor

    Letter to the editor

    New Student Housing Community in the Works for Lumberjacks!

    Dear Editor:

    I’m pleased to announce that The Village, a new housing choice, is in the works for students attending Humboldt State University. As you probably know, HSU currently has room on campus for only about 25 percent of the students enrolled, which has made it difficult for HSU students to find housing year after year.

    According to a report funded by HSU, the Arcata housing market is so constrained, some students sleep in their cars or camp in the woods while they look for housing. There is currently demand for roughly 800 new student housing beds in order to address students’ housing insecurity and to support their academic pursuits.

    After various inadequate attempts to increase housing options, the city is now on the verge of having the most viable new housing choice for students in many years.

    The Village isn’t just another apartment building, it is planned as a purpose-built student housing community only half a mile from campus that specifically meets students’ needs with academic amenities such as spacious study rooms, computer lab and presentation room for individual or group study and collaboration, a fitness center with on-demand fitness programs, outdoor community space and secure covered bicycle parking. The Village will also have 24-hour professional on-site management, as well as peer mentorship from resident assistants that will be responsive to students’ needs. This property will also include many sustainable features including solar power, a bicycle-share program and electric vehicle charging stations, and will be built to environmentally conscious Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver standards.

    The Village will help improve the reputation of the Arcata community by creating more healthy competition in the housing market and energizing the local economy that is largely fueled by HSU and its students, and will introduce more diversity into the housing mix to reflect the diversity of today’s students and their needs.

    Despite the many positive benefits The Village will bring to the community, there are those who are actively trying to prevent current and future Lumberjacks from making The Village their home while attending HSU.

    If you are in support of the positive housing choice The Village will offer to HSU students and the community of Arcata and want to find out more, please visit this website: https://www.thevillagearcata.com/. You can also contact the Arcata City Council and let them know you support more student housing in Arcata, especially purpose-built student housing communities like The Village.

    It’s all about choices. Your support of this project can help ensure The Village is able to offer HSU students an exciting, new place to call home, and one that HSU students deserve.

    Percival Vaz
    Chief Executive Officer
    AMCAL Equities, LLC

  • Letter to the editor: We want student housing, but not the AMCAL way

    Letter to the editor: We want student housing, but not the AMCAL way

    Author Maureen J. Jules is a former HSU student and active member of Arcata Citizens for Responsible Housing.

    Dear editor:

    AMCAL, a large corporation from Southern California, wants to join the Arcata housing scene, claiming to help students find affordable, off-campus housing that is convenient for walking and biking to class. However, it is no accident that in 2012, AMCAL jumped into the profit-driven student housing market that’s worth $200 billion dollars. Since then, its luxury student housing projects have made rents even less affordable. AMCAL’s projects have exploded into college towns throughout California and Texas. Not surprisingly, similar corporations have carried this profiteering trend across the nation.

    The effect of these privatized dorms increases rent for everyone and isolates students from the larger community. In Flagstaff, Arizona, for instance, private dorms have resulted in less affordable housing for all.

    “At $700 a bedroom in most student complexes, that effectively sets the price of a three-bedroom apartment at $2,100 a month,” the editorial board of the Arizona Daily Sun said. “That means a family of four should be earning $6,500 a month to afford that rent (30 percent of income) while the median income in Flagstaff is well below that.”

    Now, AMCAL is at our doorstep, where they hope to finance the construction of a 700 to 800-bed, yet highly restrictive dorm complex off campus (think gated, enforced quiet hours, corporate residential assistants and no alcohol or legal recreational drugs). I oppose their student housing project called The Village.

    Since I love HSU students, how can I possibly oppose student housing? We are a college town and our students are cherished, valued, vibrant and intelligent community members. Students help define Arcata and they have just as much a right to live here as anyone.

    That said, Arcata is a small town hemmed in by the bay, the farmland bottoms and the forest. I also have a serious shortage of housing and buildable land.

    The property eyed for The Village is a rare, eleven-acre parcel surrounded on three sides by non-commercial residential neighborhoods. The site is not ideal for dorms, because there is no easily accessed grocery store and it is far from downtown. Plus, it is on the opposite side of Highway 101 from HSU, yet nowhere near the Northtown footbridge. This means those supposedly “convenient” walking, biking and driving routes to both classes and shopping will take The Village residents through congested and convoluted areas, like the Sunset/LK Wood intersection, several limited access trails and neighborhoods without adequate lighting or sidewalks. Furthermore, The Village plan would only provide about 300 parking spots for 700-800 beds, and residents who need cars would have to pay extra for parking.

    This project would increase student housing, but only for those who can afford to live in upscale dorms where limited parking costs extra. These new off-campus dorms would lack all the conveniences and services on campus, including access to campus police and meal plans.

    Greenway Partners is a consulting firm working on an alternative with ACRH. They are working together with over 150 ACRH members to create a pro-housing, pro-density and pro-infill alternative. I want our housing alternative to include apartments that HSU students will enjoy renting. I hope student apartments will be mixed in with other uses: light retail and single-family homes, some with mother-in-law units which HSU students might also like renting.

    When students fledge the coup, I want them to have access to more neighborhood housing where they can easily get to know the non-student community. Dorms belong on or next to campus, not plunked down in distant neighborhoods absent of food and shopping. It isn’t that I don’t want student rentals or students for neighbors; I don’t want AMCAL dorms. We can build community by living together, working side by side and getting to know one another. You, the students, are our community and Arcata should be the village, not AMCAL.

    Arcata Citizens for Responsible Housing is actively seeking student input and can be reached at: arcatacrh@gmail.com