De Anza College

De Anza College is within the City limits of Cupertino, but the City does not have any control over the college, including when it comes to land use.

De Anza College (and Foothill College) have their own governing board. However it would benefit the City of Cupertino to collaborate more closely with the Foothill-De Anza Community College District. Some De Anza facilities are underused, especially on weekends, and it would be useful for residents to have access to these facilities, including the library, the pool, the track, and the performing arts center. I have already been in contact with FHDA board members on exploring shared facility use.

De Anza is one of the premier community colleges in California and as such it attracts students from far outside the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, in fact the majority of students attending these colleges come from outside the District. Unfortunately this has led to housing insecurity for some De Anza College students, some of whom were living in their cars when in-person classes were occurring. Since community colleges were designed to primarily serve the residents in the their district, with students living at home, the colleges usually do not have student housing available. A few community colleges in California do have student housing but these are colleges in rural areas where the college serves a wide geographic area.

While the City of Cupertino does not have any authority over the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, and how they spend their money, I would encourage the District to use some of the money from the recently passed $898 million Measure G bond measure to address the issue of housing insecurity of students.

None of the cities in the District have the funds or the ability to solve the issue of housing insecurity for De Anza or Foothill students. The most recent project in Cupertino, the 18 unit Veranda project, cost nearly $800,000 per unit, and these were 350 square foot studio apartments. The City paid for the land, and the County and non-profits provided money for construction. De Anza could build some student and/or teacher housing on their campus, or purchase existing apartment buildings using the Measure G money for construction or renovation. We are in one of the wealthiest areas in the United States. We can do better than having students living in cars. Voters generously approved an $898 million bond measure for the Community College District in order to address the needs of the colleges, including housing.

Long-term, ALL California cities should advocate for increased State funding for community colleges statewide in an effort to bring all community colleges up to the high educational standards of De Anza and Foothill colleges. Housing insecurity for students would be reduced if students did not feel compelled to attend community colleges far from their homes in order to get a proper education. In the meantime, Foothill and De Anza colleges have an obligation to use some of the Measure G bond money to address housing insecurity for students. The residents of cities in the Community College District are paying the $898 million for Measure G even though a majority of Foothill and De Anza students do not come from cities in the District. This funding should certainly be sufficient to address the problem.

The other issue we have in Cupertino, with regards to subsidized housing, is that the property owners that have approved projects, all of which include some Below Market Rate housing, are not moving forward with construction. This is due to multiple factors, but the biggest issue is the current glut of unaffordable market-rate housing. Normally, the high-rent market-rate housing would subsidize the Below Market Rate housing, but even before the Covid-19 pandemic developers were choosing not to build their approved projects.

The city of Cupertino has one of the best jobs to housing ratios in the area and has entitled 3,457 residential units, far above and beyond the 1,064 residential units required by RHNA, but only 19 units of our 1,400 RHNA entitlement have been built (an additional 2057 units, over and above the 1,400 units in our Housing Element, have been entitled). We have no way to force developers to actually build their projects.

Separate from the issue of housing, we should encourage our community colleges to re-engage with the cities in the district to build a constituency to support the colleges. We used to have events like De Anza Days and we used to have events at the Flint Center. Moving forward we need to rebuild the relationship between the City of Cupertino and De Anza College. To combat declining enrollment, high school students should be encouraged to choose De Anza or Foothill College as a lower-cost alternative to CSU or UC for the first two years of college, and then transfer to a CSU or UC.