Sonoma State University spent $42 million in 2018 to purchase Marina Crossing, a Petaluma apartment building which was meant to be affordable housing for their faculty and staff. After being opened to the public to rent in 2020, the occupancy rate increased. Now, amid the budget cuts and faculty layoffs, only 17 units are occupied by SSU employees.
Marina Crossing was meant to alleviate the burden of housing costs in Sonoma County for SSU faculty. At the same time, the county was recovering from the 2017 wildfires, therefore the housing market was out of place and there were less employees at SSU. The ex-president of SSU, Judy Sakaki, said that in 2017, one in five job candidates that were offered positions ended up rejecting them because of the housing crisis.
Employees who lost their homes to the fire needed affordable housing so they could continue to work, making the purchase of the apartment complex seem like a good solution. The California State University Board of Trustees approved the university’s investment and they were financed through bonds.
In 2022, the rent ranged from $1,960 to $3,095, with the intention of keeping the rent below market prices. As of now, it’s between $1,900 and $3,500 with no current discount.
When the housing plan was announced, Sonoma State staff was set to get first picks and the rest would be for employees from other colleges. A Press Democrat article from 2018 said it would be unlikely there would be vacant units. However, this prediction turned out to be incorrect.
Many university employees came out at the time anonymously and expressed feeling the rent prices weren’t affordable. One professor was looking at a three-bedroom rental but lost interest after he saw that it cost the same amount of money as a mortgage payment.
According to a Press Democrat article in 2019, Joyce Lopes, the school’s former vice president for administration and finance, assured the community that all they wanted to do was provide housing for their colleagues.
“Our goal is not to make money on this project; our goal is to provide quality housing,” Lopes was quoted as saying in the article.
In response to a Facebook post by the Press Democrat, many locals had strong opinions about the school’s original purpose for the housing project and their decision-making, considering the recent budget deficit announcement.
Madeline Cline, one of the supervisors of Mendocino County who commented on the post wrote, “During my time in student government at Sonoma State, I was vocal in my opposition to costly and ineffective faculty housing programs like this one. The students’ voices were ignored. Years of unaligned financial management and lack of true leadership has led Sonoma State to this point.”
Another commenter said, “the education funding pot needs to be looked into deeply.”
A third asked, “Did they ask before they bought it? ‘Hey, if we buy this, would anybody move there?’”
SSU Interim President Emily Cutrer told the Star that administration is considering selling the building in five years. Cutrer explained that the current terms of the contract and the remaining debt owed on the complex would make it difficult to sell now.
