Did I forget to close the window? My roommate and I walked inside our dorm room and were greeted by a breeze. Our almost half-empty tiny room—built as a single, but now used by the University of California, Santa Cruz, as a double—had been burglarized. Our laundry bags, suitcases, and school backpacks were gone. Shocked and confused, we flung open our dressers to discover that they, too, were empty. Almost every piece of clothing we had ever owned had been stolen. The burglar, who had a fetish for stealing women’s clothing, had left our laptops but packed our clothes in our suitcases and rolled off with them. Living in a dorm room that was half the size of what it was supposed to be, in a gulch that sunlight struggled to reach, had taken a toll on my mental health, but the theft pushed me over the edge. I fell into a deep depression.
The new school year brought a wave of media coverage of undergrads who buy the services of interior designers to make their dorm rooms super fancy. In the New York Times, designers interviewed by journalist Danielle Braff recommended that students buy monogrammed pillows, linens, dust ruffles, handmade murals, and a couch and coffee table. Lesley Lachman, a freshman at the University of Mississippi, says she paid a design company around $3,000 to give her what Braff describes as a “New York City-style dorm room with a touch of Southern charm.” “I leave my door open with so much pride and confidence,” Ms. Lachman told the paper. When I left my dorm room window open, I got all my clothes stolen.
As an undergrad at UCSC, my experience with student housing has been about as unlike these students’ as you can get. My cramped, shared dorm, constructed to be a single, certainly has no room for a coffee table, and I doubt a makeover would do much for it. Older people seem to enjoy reading about younger people’s fancy rooms, maybe because tuition is so high, and because of the funny contrast between the cinder-block walls they remember from their own college days and the fine digs in the stories. I’m here to tell you that for a lot of students, housing is as bad as it’s ever been—maybe worse.
The on-campus mental health crisis, though improving a bit of late, continues to affect the student experience. These two social crises, mental health and housing—typically treated as separate problems—are one and the same. Expensive, cramped, and/or unsafe housing has a significant effect on the mental state of students, as I can attest personally. And the obverse is true, too: When you’re in a distressed state of mind, having a relaxing, affordable, and safe place to go home to can help alleviate this distress. When neither exists, one gets trapped in a sort of feedback loop.
The circumstances that led to our unfortunate encounter with the clothes burglar were preventable. I live and go to school in Santa Cruz, California, which has (according to one 2023 report) the highest rents in the United States. UCSC has been packing two student dormers into rooms designed for one. My dorm, which houses continuing students, was built in a secluded gulley on campus. The isolated location made it ideal for a Peeping Tom to make off with a few carts of women’s clothing.
Santa Cruz, like many of California’s picturesque (and touristy) college towns, is wracked by a housing crisis; for more than a decade, stories of homeless students and students living in squalor have made headlines. In 2020, 9 percent of UCSC’s student body reported experiencing homelessness; about 1,600 out of 18,000 students were homeless.
My experience vividly illustrated how this housing problem is tied up with mental health. As a woman who experienced a robbery, I felt violated in my living situation. Living in a small space was already anxiety-inducing. The burglar destroyed what was left of the emotional support system I’d worked so hard to create.
I’m not the only person to notice this connection between oppressive housing environments and mental health. Experts agree that one’s environment is intimately tied to one’s mental state. Sara Lindberg, a health writer and counselor, describes one’s environment and one’s mental health as “intrinsically connected.” “The places where you spend a lot of time—home, work, school, and even socially—can significantly impact your mental well-being,” Lindberg writes.
The obvious solution to a stressful housing situation is to move, but when housing is scarce and expensive, simply moving isn’t always an option. This truth is exemplified in the now-famous story of Steven Stanzak, who was a blogger and undergraduate at New York University whose story of homelessness went viral in the early 2000s. Stanzak, who blogged under the pseudonym “Bobst Boy,” lived in the basement of NYU’s 12-story Bobst Library in Greenwich Village for eight months because he couldn’t afford on- or off-campus housing. Stanzak could cover his tuition costs, but could not get enough loans to cover his housing.
Stanzak’s tell-all blog, Homeless at NYU, went viral at the time, and he was interviewed by numerous regional outlets. In an article by Angela Almeida published in NYU Local, Stanzak told her, “It was incredibly isolating to live in a place meant for work, to publicly perform actions meant to be private. … I remember trying to pass off these experiences as funny tidbits for a future novel, or as the glamorous life of a Bohemian, but I never truly felt it—it was more of a way for me to cope with things as they were. … But I won’t lie, it was a horrible time in my life and I was often depressed.”
Being able to put into context one’s trauma, and seeing past one’s delusions, is easier when one has had time to reflect. This interview with Almeida occurred 11 years after Steven Stanzak started his blog in his sophomore year. I can relate to Stanzak’s reflections after having a year to process the burglary. When I was initially robbed, I was in a state of dissociation and was completely numb to the situation. Now I fully grasp how violating that experience truly was.
Stanzak escaped his library residence when the administration saw his blog going viral and offered him transitional housing. But the ability to escape a bad housing situation is a luxury reserved for a select few, as housing insecurity and homelessness among college students is a pervasive national issue. In 2024, the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice at Temple University conducted a survey of more than 74,000 students and found that 48 percent of students experience housing insecurity and 59 percent experience “basic needs insecurity related to food or housing.”
Other undergraduates trapped in bad housing situations attest to the toll on their mental health. Diana Dona, who is currently a junior at New York University, likened her on-campus housing to a “prison.” “It’s really small,” she told me in an interview. “I feel depressed if I stay in for a day.”
Ashley Christiansen, who is currently a senior at the University of California, Davis, which is located in another town with high average rents, had her own roommate nightmare that tested her mental state. Christiansen, who lived in an off-campus apartment, woke up to the sound of her roommate “unzipping his pants.” “I was so scared that night I couldn’t sleep,” she told me. “The next morning when we looked on my side of the closet, we saw he had actually peed on my clothes and shoes in my closet.” Christiansen was disgusted, but is “stuck in a lease with him,” she says. The financial burden of finding better housing has weighed her down.
“The price for what I’m getting is a lot lower than most places in Davis,” she continued.” She aspires to move, but says that other apartments in town “are a lot more expensive, and I know I wouldn’t be able to afford it.”
Shree Rajarajan, a senior at the University of California, Santa Cruz, lived in cramped housing on campus that houses more students than it was designed for. Rajarajan said such living situations made her feel “unmotivated” and depressed.” “It is inhumane to live in a claustrophobic room,” she said.
In housing-distressed regions like the Bay Area, students who live off-campus and suffer the wrath of the private housing market can be equally immiserated as students shoved into overflowing dorms. Santa Cruz only guarantees its students on-campus housing for one year; for students living under private landlords, it is not unusual to live two or even three to a bedroom all the way until their senior year. Rents over $1,000 a month for half of a bedroom are not unusual, either. The desperation that stems from scarce housing reduces housing mobility—again, making it harder for students to move out of a stressful or toxic living situation.
Humans are social creatures, and feeling outcast or excluded is a surefire way to spiral into depression. Living in a home or dorm with hostile or cold housemates—as many college students are forced to do—can affect one’s well-being and schoolwork.
April Snow, a licensed psychotherapist and author, describes the stress that emerges from this kind of relational discomfort. “Indirect or inconsistent communication, conflicts, and unreliable people in the environment can be very stressful to manage,” Snow writes. “Conversely, sharing a space with someone you trust, such as a partner or spouse, roommate, friend, or loved one, can create a sense of calm.” As a college student, finding time to see your friends while maintaining your other responsibilities is challenging. Your mental state and the factors that affect it become second priority. It is tough to maintain a happy mental state when you do not have a support system to come home to.
Student mental health and the housing crisis are a circle, two arrows pointing to each other. Lily DuBois, my roommate and fellow crime victim, saw her mental health suffer after the burglary in our dorm. “It was extremely difficult to keep up with work, school, and my other responsibilities while managing financial and psychological stress resulting from the robbery,” said DuBois, a senior. “I lost sleep, and found that substances were the only way I could relieve my depression and anxiety.”
I love the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the community I have built here with all my heart. The university is pursuing various building projects to ameliorate the housing shortage situation, hoping to increase student housing by 40 percent by 2030. By that time, I expect to be long gone. This is an immediate issue that we need to improve on for the well-being of future students. The housing crisis is more than a political issue; it is psychological. We are a product of our environment. It affects who we are and who we evolve to be. It affects our minds. If we tackle the housing crisis—by building more dorms on UC campuses, by mandating social housing, by enacting rent control, or otherwise—the student mental health crisis may start to dissipate too.
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