“I’m struggling for basic needs such as toilet paper, buying my son milk,” said Arjona, who pays about $1,700 a month in rent out of the $2,200 she receives
A cursory examination of Craigslist shows that you can easily rent a nice 4 bedroom house for $4000/month in Santa Cruz. Get a couple of roommates to split the rent and you're only paying $1000/month.
Perhaps Arjona should consider that she could have more money for living expenses if she was more economical with her housing choices. After all, she was the one who chose to sign a lease for $1700/month on a $2200/month salary, when cheaper options exist.
As somebody in Santa Cruz, good ducking luck actually getting that house.
Finding a place off Craig's list is nearly impossible.
Last time I tried to use that (5years ago), the only call-backs I got from about 20 calls were landlords that recognized my name and I had known from other contexts (I've lived here a while). I ended up getting a place through other personal connections. Most local rentals operate on a network of personal connections here, with locals offering friends or other locals a deal to get by in an expensive town. Students never get this treatment, and often don't even get shown rooms.
For a grad student arriving without an extensive network, a room for $1700 isn't too bad.
The university has abandoned these students, and so has the town.
Where are you seeing that she has roommates? It's not mentioned in the article I read, and I don't see any evidence that the units are shared at https://housing.ucsc.edu/family/. In fact, it says the rent for a 2br is $1700 a month, the same as what she says she's paying.
In any case, the mistake seems to be earlier in the decision-making process, when she decided to become a anthropology graduate student while having a child to care for and without the financial resources to complete the program.
Nobody forced her to make these living arrangements that consume such a large percentage of her monthly salary. While it is regrettable, it's not the responsibility of the university to make sure that its students make good life choices.
If they are so rent-burdened, they should consider living with a roommate, or perhaps 2 or 3 roommates. Then they would be more easily able to afford basic necessities.
I can’t speak to GP’s situation, but TFA makes clear that the university grad student housing available at UCSC in this specific real-world case is in fact not sufficient for the graduate students to afford such a living situation on their stipends.