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Housing & Food Resources for Students - Cabrillo College

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Resources for finding housing, rental assistance, homeless services food and the fresh market.

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What are your thoughts on the College's current sustainability efforts?

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What are your thoughts on the College's current sustainability efforts?

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Where do we want to be in 10 years? (By 2035)

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Where do we want to be in 10 years? (By 2035)

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At Cabrillo College, we are steadfastly dedicated to contributing to a more sustainable future through an integrated approach, both for our campus community and for the world at large. We recognize the importance of nurturing an socially and ecologically just and environmentally thriving future and fostering this culture among our students, staff, and faculty. Join us ~ all are welcomed ~ students, faculty and staff ~ woven through the fabric of who we are at Cabrillo!

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At Cabrillo College, we are steadfastly dedicated to contributing to a more sustainable future through an integrated approach, both for our campus community and for the world at large. We recognize the importance of nurturing an socially and ecologically just and environmentally thriving future and fostering this culture among our students, staff, and faculty.

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Aptos Farmers Market at Cabrillo College Voted America's Favorite Farmers Market in California In 2011, 2012, and 2013 our farmers markets were voted "America's Favorite Farmers Market in California." Additionally, Coastal Living Magazine named the Aptos Farmers Market one of "The Coast's Best Farmers Markets."

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All of our community's water is pumped with wells from underground from the Mid-County Groundwater Basin. The Mid-County Groundwater Basin comprises two primary aquifers: the Purisima Aquifer Formation and the Aromas Red Sands. The Purisima provides two-thirds of the District's annual production for Capitola, Soquel, and Aptos. The Aromas Red Sands provides the remaining one-third for the Seascape, Rio Del Mar, and La Selva Beach communities. The Mid-County Groundwater basin is shared with other pumpers throughout our area, including the City of Santa Cruz, Central Water District, small mutual water companies, and thousands of private-well owners.

Our shared groundwater basin is currently in a state of overdraft, meaning more water is being extracted than naturally replenished by rainfall. This condition has led to seawater intrusion detected at our coastline and, if left unresolved, will contaminate the groundwater wells and make them unusable to produce drinking water.

Groundwater Emergency and Stage 3 Water Shortage Declaration: On June 17, 2014, the District Board declared a Groundwater Emergency and Stage 3 Water Restriction based on the critical overdraft of the groundwater basin and the seawater contamination occurring.

Monitoring Program: Since 1981, the District has maintained an extensive monitoring and management program to define our underlying groundwater resources better. Over eighty monitoring wells in twenty-five different locations monitor water quality and groundwater levels in the two aquifers that make up our water supply. All wells are sampled to measure chlorides, general minerals, total dissolved solids, and static water level as an early warning for saltwater intrusion.

Groundwater Sustainability

Basin Declared Unsustainable: On September 16, 2014 the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) was signed by Governor Brown which was California's landmark legislation for statewide management of groundwater. With this passage, the groundwater basins within California were evaluated and assessed on their sustainability. The Santa Cruz Mid-County Groundwater Basin (Basin 3-001) which is the basin in our region, is declared as one of 21 basins in CA identified as "Criticially Overdrafted" and mandated to be brought into sustainability by 2040.

Soquel Creek Water District is one of the partner agencies that comprise the Santa Cruz Mid-County Groundwater Agency (MGA). The MGA maintains a dedicated webpage with information about the California Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) and what our area is doing to get our basin into sustainability by 2040.

One of the key responsibilities of the MGA is to develop, adopt, and submit a Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP). The Plan has been approved by the State of California. On their webpage, you can find:

Other Useful Links

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All of our community's water is pumped with wells from underground from the Mid-County Groundwater Basin.

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Edible landscaping/community garden on campus
Anthro 17 student identified potential areas for gardening on campus
Outdoor spaces that improve mental health
Kenny - Big Creek has offered materials for building raised
Look at other successful garden projects at other campuses

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Why do we have so much lawn area?

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Rachel - appreciates better bike lanes, but recognizes that most facutly, staff, and students cannot bike or ride the bus to campus

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Rachel - appreciates better bike lanes, but recognizes that most facutly, staff, and students cannot bike or ride the bus to campus

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Rachel - gentrification is a problem in SC County and lower-income students are moving farther away for affordable housing, which increases commute times

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Rachel - gentrification is a problem in SC County and lower-income students are moving farther away for affordable housing, which increases commute times

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We need many more bottle fill stations on campus

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Kenny - we could use rainwater to flush toilets or for other indoor uses

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Credit: Arabel Meyer/EdSource

It's universally acknowledged that today's youth have been dealt a tough hand in terms of education during the pandemic. Being one of the unfortunate students who graduated from high school and entered college in 2020, I understand this struggle.

For my peers and me, under the cloud of Covid-19, it wasn't only difficult to acclimate to the new educational environment of college, but the social one as well.

I moved to San Luis Obispo to attend Cal Poly in the winter of 2021. I had spent a quarter at home, since my classes were all on Zoom, but those months left me feeling lonely and disconnected.

As an incoming college student, moving to a new town can be nerve-racking in the best circumstances. Adding the implications and hysteria of a global pandemic on top of these pressures made it doubly difficult.

With our classes online and other social environments like student clubs suspending their in-person meetings, I was left with some of the same feelings of dissatisfaction I'd had when attending school remotely. As someone who enjoys time spent outside and with others, it was difficult to spend so much time indoors, staring at a computer screen.

But, sometimes solutions present themselves in unconventional ways. For me, the missing pieces of my college experience were a shovel and a hand in the earth.

In my sophomore year, I discovered the Cal Poly Student Experimental Farm, a student-run community garden on my campus. Along with its personal impact on me as a source of community during a disconnected time, this garden is representative of much more.

The first time I found my campus's garden, I was in awe of the space. It sits on a hill beneath the greater Cal Poly campus, a vast carpet of green breaking up the landscape. Among swaths of grasses sit orderly beds of cultivated plants and fruit-bearing trees, with a path leading to a fenced-off coop and pond to house the resident chickens and ducks.

This space is tended by the Cal Poly Garden Club, a community of Earth-loving students that I felt immediately connected to. Attending the weekly meetings began to feel like a sort of healing. I would look forward to Sunday mornings when I could wake up early to traverse the gravel path to the garden and work in the sunshine for several hours.

"So many kids that come to garden club are people that live on campus, and they don't have a backyard or a natural space that they can call their own," said Emma Roberts, a fourth-year student and senior member of the club. "We have this small piece of nature that we tend to, and it also tends to us. It's nice because everyone needs to have their own space outside."

"College only provides your own space inside, but if a school has a garden, it provides a space outside for the students," she added.

Research is beginning to be conducted on the impact of active green spaces on college campuses. A 2019 study by researchers at Furman and Yale universities indicated that "students who frequently engage with green spaces in active ways report higher quality of life, better overall mood, and lower perceived stress."

My inclination to seek out the healing of the sun and soil is shared by many young people at universities. In the early 2000s, few gardens on college campuses existed. However, in the past decade, there has been an increase in the cultivation of these community spaces. Eighteen CSU campuses are listed as having student community gardens; all 10 University of California campuses have some sort of student garden.

In California, several other campuses have exceptional garden spaces. Among them are UC Berkeley's Campus Gardens. The campus is home to more than 10 gardens that offer the community aspect, experimental research and a resource to fight student food insecurity. The Pomona College Organic Farm runs on over an acre of land and is actively used as an educational tool for small-scale farming and sustainability.

For me, my time working in my campus garden has been a source of much-needed connection and a way to practice a sustainable, mindful lifestyle.

Eva Moylan, a third-year student and long-time member of the club, summed it up. "I think we are really lucky to have this space," she said. "Even if you aren't involved, just to have a space for students to sit quietly and see nature - I think it would be a really valuable thing to have on any campus."

***
Arabel Meyer is a third-year journalism major at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and a member of EdSource's California Student Journalism Corps.
The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
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COMMENTARY: College community gardens promote growth and healing in Covid's wake

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Community gardens on college campuses give students access to nature and an opportunity to tend to - and be nurtured by - the outdoors.

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Implementation Understanding the importance of combating food insecurity on campus and the surrounding community, the president of Palo Alto College designated space within S.H.A.R.E. center for an on-campus food pantry and a plot of land on campus for the Community Garden.

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Plant pollinator gardens to support food production on campus

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Plant pollinator gardens to support food production on campus

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Bring in the Amah Mutsun tribal band to help guide community gardens to support students, staff, and faculty 

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Bring in the Amah Mutsun tribal band to help guide community gardens to support students, staff, and faculty 

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I have been pushing for a refillable water bottle station at VAPA where the two pretty nasty water fountains are

It’s near vending machines that don’t work and it’s so central to many buildings. It would be heavily used and appreciated by staff, faculty, students, administrators, and visitors.

I even envisioned writing a grant so we could pay students to create an eco-mural behind it since it would be in this perfect inset in the building

It would look fabulous and it would be seen on entering the arts facilities from the sesnon lot

I didn’t write the grant cuz it sounded like the school is in transition about how we handle filtered water on campus in a sustainable way.

But I’m happy to help in this area

Thx

Janet Fine