Student outreach begins with USC Village
USC is more than a campus — it’s a community. And this fall, it will welcome an entirely new village. After years of construction, hundreds of millions of dollars and over 1 million hours of toil, USC’s recent expansive development project will open this July. USC Village will undoubtedly expand the horizons of the University and thousands of its students. Despite the progress that has been made, relationships between USC and its surrounding community must be mended and new bridges need to be built when the final bricks of construction are laid.
After years of negotiations with Los Angeles City Council and community activists, USC agreed to pay $20 million to fund affordable housing in the area and to support other measures that would benefit the local community. One of these measures is a job-hiring and training program that will benefit thousands of USC’s neighbors. As the largest private employer in the city of Los Angeles, USC hired several thousand workers to construct USC Village, with 15 percent of these workers commuting within a five-mile radius of the construction. For the workers, this project is more than just a job; it’s a key to a better future. Not only did this construction provide the training and experience for workers to move on to other jobs, but also through programs like 2nd Call and My Brother’s Keeper, the work provides a second chance to formerly incarcerated community members who were recruited for the job. Once the project is completed, 100,000 square feet of retail space will provide more opportunities for job-seekers. Already ,more than 1,000 resumes have already been submitted.
These stories and statistics are often lost among students, who are misguided in believing that gentrification is the only effect of USC Village. Encroaching gentrificatoin is evident in surrounding areas, especially in south central Los Angeles near Hollywood and Downtown. With new developments in historically low-income areas attracting wealthier homebuyers, the local population often becomes displaced by higher rental prices. So when USC Village, an impressive collection of apartment buildings located right off campus, began to rise, so did fears of squeezing out members of the surrounding community.
Yet USC Village could solve this very same problem. After their freshman year, many students search for housing in the local neighborhood, inadvertently raising rental prices for community members as retailers can charge higher prices for these college students. But now, with nearly 3,000 more USC students living on-campus in USC Village, there will no longer be as many students competing with local community members for housing. USC Village will then reducing the housing demand surrounding campus, and potentially drive down prices.
That’s not to say problems will no longer exist. The real effects of gentrification could manifest in the retail shops dotting the ground level of USC Village. Seventeen of the 37 businesses removed from the University Village complex were non-franchise businesses. Any of these non-franchise businesses were locally owned, from mom-and-pop convenience stores to small businesses. Despite the fact that USC provided financial assistance for the relocation or closing of these businesses, the community still lost a part of their neighborhood. Even though the University, according to the USC Village website, emphasizes “that student customer price points and community member custom prices points are an extremely good match,” many worry that these new shops, catered to the USC community, will be unaffordable to a surrounding population where almost half of the residents live in poverty.
As our campus expands, so too must our perspectives and consciences. USC Village is not only a blessing and an opportunity, but it is also a challenge. The University must be conscious of its effects on the community, and students must also engage with neighbors and do their part to build and strengthen a village of their own. It is the students’ responsibility to extend their hand and spend these next years engaging with — not isolating — the community. This could take place in the form of volunteering through the Joint Educational Project or working to make the Village more of a community space through communal events in the new quad and new outreach initiatives. Because ultimately, the Trojan Family extends past the vast borders and alumni base.