HomeMy WebLinkAbout3/5/2024 Item 8a, Kienow
FW: Cal Poly Housing and Enrollment Updates
From: Courtney Leigh Kienow <
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Cc: Stewart, Erica A <estewart@slocity.org>; Pease, Andy <apease@slocity.org>; Marx, Jan <jmarx@slocity.org>; Francis,
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Subject: Cal Poly Housing and Enrollment Updates
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Bcc: SLO City Council
Good afternoon Mayor Stewart and Council Members,
As you approach the conversation on housing at the City Council meeting tomorrow evening, we thought it would
be helpful to have a summary of Cal Poly’s housing history and plans.
As you know, the Cal Poly team presented most of these updates to you this past fall.
Enrollment and On-Campus Housing
Cal Poly has more students living on-campus this year than ever in its history (again): both by number and
percentage. Cal Poly has the largest housing program in the CSU with active plans to grow by thousands more.
Please see below a chart of our historic growth – both in enrollment and housing.
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Over the last 20 years, Cal Poly has added 5,250 beds to its housing inventory. In that same time period,
enrollment has increased by 3,990. That’s 1,260 fewer Cal Poly students living off-campus today than in 2003.
The estimated cost of these combined efforts is approximately $2 billion dollars. It is important to note that
University Housing is a self-support operation and does not receive funding from the State of California. Thus, Cal
Poly’s efforts to increase the number of students housed on campus benefits the community by increasing
availability of housing in the City of SLO.
We also like to remind folks that fall quarter tends to be our highest in terms of enrollment which is also the timing
of the Census. Numbers tend to drop throughout the year as students graduate at the end of each term, engage in
study abroad programs, or participate in off-campus internships, among many other reasons.
In terms of future enrollment, the Cal Poly Master Plan projects growth to 25,000 full-time equivalent students. We
stand at about 22,300 as of Census for fall 2023. In 2022, the Governor and the CSU system entered a compact
that asked for systemwide 1% enrollment growth each year over a 5-year period. Because not all CSU campuses
have the demand that allows them to grow, the CSU has leaned on Cal Poly as one of the key contributors to
systemwide enrollment growth. In 2023, Cal Poly was asked to grow by 700 full time equivalent students and
achieved this largely through enhancing summer enrollment. Cal Poly expects to be asked to deliver additional
modest growth for the CSU system for the next few years. Over the last two years, our enrollment growth has been
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largely facilitated by growing our summer enrollment and providing more course offerings for our current students.
In fact, over a two year period, we raised our overall FTE by 1600 while only growing our total headcount by 266
students. Moving forward, we expect a slightly larger incoming class for fall of 2024, but will continue accelerating
growth through an even more strategic and efficient use of the summer term as well as further increasing course
offerings to our current students and growing partnership programs with our local community colleges.
Future On-Campus Student Housing
Cal Poly developed a Housing Future Plan to increase on-campus housing. The intent of these new developments
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is not only to keep up with enrollment growth, but to pull 2 year students out of off-campus rentals and alleviate
some of the housing pressures in the community. The 10-year, $1.8 billion plan calls for the replacement of the
North Mountain Residence Hall with newer, more modern facilities and new residence halls on the current parking
lots above North Mountain. New developments will amount to a minimum of 3,000 new beds with the first phase
of this project delivering beds in fall 2026. In addition, the plan calls for significant renovations in the Red Bricks
during summer months.
Building on-campus student housing is the most cost-effective way to increase the number of units in the
community.
You can find more information about this phased plan here: http://www.housing.calpoly.edu/future-housing
Faculty/Staff Housing at Grand and Slack
Construction to build 33 single family residential units for faculty and staff at the northeast corner of the
intersection of Grand Avenue and Slack Street will begin this spring. The intent is for these homes to be a for sale
product. The project recently completed 75% schematic design review. We are working closely with City staff on
many aspects of this project. A significant amount of dirt will soon be moved onto the site as well as the
demolition of the kiosk structure. We have a mailer with information about the project and construction that we
are sending to all of the homes in the Alta Vista and Monterey Heights neighborhoods. More information on the
project can be found here.
This is the second project in our housing program that currently includes the nearly 70 units at Bella Montana.
Additional development sites that will include rental options on and/or near campus are currently being evaluated
as part of the long-term plan to have 400-600 units of workforce housing developed by Cal Poly.
For a full update on our future plans for faculty and staff housing, please visit the Cal Poly Partners (formerly Cal
Poly Corporation) website.
These projects are intended to address commonly voiced recruitment and retention issues for Cal Poly’s faculty
and staff as well as provide additional housing options amidst the extremely high demand in the local housing
market.
Sincerely,
Courtney
Courtney Kienow
pronouns she/hers (why is this important?)
Director of Community Relations
Office of the President
Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, CA
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office 805-756-6000
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direct 805-756-6098
www.calpoly.edu
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