NIMBYs in the city sue the university to stop all housing, infrastructure, or other things that may allow for more students or reduce their problems.
Fortunately there have been modifications to CEQA last year to prevent these abuses of the law that result in worse environmental outcomes (students driving long distances rather than living on campus)
The original plan was to build out UCSC a lot more. I think the regents lost their motivation after building colleges 9 and 10 and also I think if they built more student housing, they'd have to build more parking lots (so many students have cars) and the traffic in the city would increase tremendously.
No need. We're solving a narrow problem: students' need to park on campus. Out-of-town commuter and part-time students will need a car. But everyone else is solvable.
Specifically, Merrill and Oakes college have that parking lot, and there's a parking structure by the Earth/sciences building, and another one up above college 11, and several more. Once you get on campus though, there's a reasonably good shuttle to take you around campus, so you just need to park somewhere on campus and then give yourself enough time to take the shuttle to your destination. If you're living on campus, you only need to get off campus to go to the local downtown bar scene, or for other extracurriculars, but there's a bus that takes you downtown so as a student you can get away with not having a car.
Fortunately there have been modifications to CEQA last year to prevent these abuses of the law that result in worse environmental outcomes (students driving long distances rather than living on campus)