Whether you’re looking for a Cafe Dulce drink or stepping into Target to buy dorm essentials, USC Village has an atmospheric mix of residential, retail and dining. Opened in 2017, USC Village added 2,500 beds, marking a nearly 25% increase in available USC Housing available to undergraduate and graduate students. 

However, USC Housing is currently limited, making it difficult for students to secure a place to live.

USC Housing, especially on-campus housing, prioritizes freshmen and sophomores. With over 20,000 undergraduate students, 65% of undergraduate upperclassmen live in non-university housing. Similarly, with over 20,000 graduate students, over 90% of graduate students live in non-University housing.

In the past decade, USC has seen significant changes in available housing, not limited to USC Village. Fluor Tower, with 342 beds for undergraduates, was demolished in 2022 following seismic safety concerns and flooding. Marks Hall and Trojan Hall were demolished in 2023, losing 96 and 222 beds, respectively. 

Although the USC Village was a solution to limited student housing, its construction raised concerns about displacement.

In April 2025, Students for Justice in Palestine and the USC Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation — both advocacy groups not affiliated with the University — hosted a boycott to close down USC Village. The organizations stated that USC Village was an expensive “$700 million project of displacement of the South Central community.” 

Additionally, investors in nearby neighborhoods at USC began to flip houses in Jefferson Park and West Adams. These neighborhoods are attractive for their proximity to USC, making it easy for students to lease, while also being close to downtown Los Angeles, the Westside and the Metro. 

For Nicholas Arvin, a graduate student studying computer engineering, University housing is preferable because it offers flexibility for students. 

“For me, it was a pretty straightforward, easy process,” Arvin said. “I’m probably graduating this semester, and you can cancel the spring [semester at Windsor, a USC-affiliated property], which is nice.”

Arvin’s experience with USC-affiliated off-campus graduate student housing has had ups and downs. This year, he has his own one-bedroom at Windsor — which hosts 13 one-bedroom apartments — and described the process of applying for it as hassle-free. 

“It wasn’t hard to get a one-bedroom apartment,” Arvin said. “There’s not a lot available … so I think I did get a little bit lucky.” 

Arvin’s application process last year was equally straightforward. Arvin said housing is easier to come by for first-year graduate students but separately described his actual living experience with roommates last year in Sierra — another housing property — as “claustrophobic,” citing the lack of common areas. 

This experience illustrates one of the main reasons the USC Village is a competitive housing option: students want “third spaces,” spaces that aren’t a first space, like one’s home, or a second place, like a professional workspace — and USC Village housing provides, with retail and dining access, study lounges and ample courtyard seating that invites students to relax. 

A Los Angeles Times article published on the opening of the Village quoted Christopher Leinberger, an urban analysis professor emeritus at George Washington University, who wrote that the trend of walkable environments and mixed-use development is driven by young people.

Aryan Khemani, a sophomore majoring in business administration living in a private housing complex, said a lot of students, especially sophomores, like to live in the Village. He said many find housing expensive and try to find cheap private housing.

While students like Khemani may think finding off-campus housing is intimidating and difficult to navigate, Deepika Sharma, the director of the Housing Law and Policy Clinic at the Gould School of Law and a USC associate professor of law, is here to help. Sharma works to empower local communities by making housing rights more accessible. 

“A lot of [resources are] accessible to the students,” Sharma said. “[We’re] going to show you how to [protect your rights] and where to go, and we’ll keep assisting you through that process,” 

The Housing Clinic is run by Gould students and primarily works to support low-income and immigrant communities in the South Central L.A. area. While the Housing Clinic does not directly serve USC students, it provides resources to low-income students and students who are tenants in off-campus housing.

If students happen to be in a bad housing situation, the Housing Clinic Instagram provides resources for students who are struggling to protect themselves as tenants from predatory landlords and uninhabitable spaces. 

“With bad conditions, it can elevate. We’ll start with giving you templates for what we call ‘demand letters’ with the law already in it,” Sharma said. “You can file a government complaint, and an inspector comes, and that usually does it. We also have an Instagram page, @uschlpc, and there we post on how to file your complaint if you have mold, bed bugs … as well as if you’re in trouble right now, [how to] speak to a housing organizer and a lawyer.”

When a bad situation arises, like those listed above, USC students can take advantage of what tools the University provides them — limiting stress and confusion of how to handle a negative situation is a plus. 

“We do the tenant ‘Know Your Rights,’ not only at the law school, but we do it with the USG department, and so we get a lot of undergrads there as well, more when they move out from the dorm second year but also graduate students,” Sharma said. “We respond to hundreds of emails of students in distress, and then we’re hoping that our Instagram resources provide people [with] where to go.”