University-affiliated housing

Your two best resources are the UC Berkeley Graduate Student Housing page and the Berkeley Student Cooperative page. Below is the general deal for the options they contain.

  • University Village (Family Housing) – Long waitlist, need to have legal proof of partnership to get in. Located in North Berkeley / west Albany

    • To shorten the wait, you can select an off-season move-in date (e.g., not May through August). Also, some fellowships allow students to move to the front of the waitlist.

    • Legal proof of partnership is VERY easy to obtain, you just need to go to any townhall and pay about $30 and sign a paper. Nothing changes in your legal marriage status, taxes don’t change etc. Point being, if you have a BFF or a partner who is chill, and want some cheap housing, go for it!

  • Ida Jackson – Long waitlist, for any graduate student from any department. Clean, furnished, cheaper than many other Bay Area apartments.

    • Downside: Located next to Greek row and various dorms.

    • Upside: Two blocks from South Campus.

    • Pro tip: For all graduate student housing, Berkeley gives preferential access to students with prestigious fellowships (e.g., NSF). This preferential treatment can shorten the waitlist from 6 months+ to a few weeks. Is it unfair? Yeah. Is it what it is? Yeah...

  • Manville – Studios only. Again, long waitlist. Preferential access is given to law students, so it is pretty unlikely graduate students from other departments will get housing there. Located just south of Downtown Berkeley.

  • Graduate Student Residential Student Coordinator – Want to live rent-free? Apply to be a Residential Student Coordinator (RSC) for Berkeley Graduate Student Housing. Responsibilities are pretty light from what I understand. Organize a few social activities every year, monitor emails and handle disputes, go to some training sessions. See here for details!

  • International House (I-House) - a cool option for domestic an international students alike, but the same issues (waitlist yadda yadda). They sometimes have fellowships which can cover housing costs for a semester or year.

  • Berkeley Student Coops - this is a different organization altogether, actually a 501c3 housing cooperative [main page]. Also has (you guessed it) a long waitlist, but worth getting on in case something opens up. This is a very different way of living -- 12-50 people in a house, a lot of shared food buying and shared meals, people take turns cooking and cleaning, etc. Other than cheap housing, many people really love the community built in to this style of living.

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