Two of the tallest college residence halls in the U.S. opened Wednesday at UC San Diego, which is scrambling to absorb an historic boom in enrollment in a region where affordable off-campus housing is scarce. Students lined up early to move into Pepper Canyon West, which features one tower that is 23 stories high and another that’s 22 stories. The bigger one is now tied with Palisade UTC Lux apartments as the tallest building in the surrounding area. There are few residence halls so tall at American universities, and none rivals a 34-story dorm that Pace University opened in New York nine years ago. UCSD’s new $365 million complex will house 1,310 upper-division transfer students, many of whom would have otherwise had to compete with everyone from engineers to nurses to find a place in busy La Jolla or University City. “We are not only meeting a critical demand for housing, but also creating a unique opportunity for students to build lasting connections in a beautiful and inspiring place,” Chancellor Pradeep Khosla told The San Diego Union-Tribune in a statement. Students living at Pepper Canyon West will each pay $1,350 per month in rent to live in the residence hall’s shared apartments. The average rent for an apartment in the La Jolla-UTC area is $3,320 per month, according to CoStar, a real estate tracker. Pepper Canyon West will help enable UCSD to house a record 22,000 students during the fall quarter, which begins on Monday. Nationwide, only UCLA, which can accommodate 24,000, houses more students. The Pepper Canyon West dormitory towers at UC San Diego on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024 in San Diego, California. The towers will house 1,300 students and are next to the Blue Line Trolley Station. (Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune) UCSD now has four residence halls that range from 16 to 23 stories tall, and it is building individual 18-story and 16-story story towers as part of another campus village. Those last two towers will be part of a complex that will house 2,400 students when it opens next fall. That won’t be the end of it. Khosla obtained permission from the UC Board of Regents earlier this year to create a village for 6,000 students, one of the largest such proposals ever made in the U.S. It would likely be composed of five skyscrapers. UCSD used to look and feel more like a quiet seaside town. But enrollment has increased by roughly 13,000 in the past decade, and the towering dorms it has prompted are making the campus more like a city. Enrollment is expected to be close to 43,000 when the fall quarter begins Monday and is projected to hit 50,000 in about a decade. Many of the students moving into Pepper Canyon on Wednesday were thrilled to have on-campus housing near the trolley, an outdoor amphitheater and the student union, with big windows facing east and west. “If we had tried to find a place off-campus that was similarly located, we would have broken the bank a bit to live there,” said student Isha Khirwadkar. “I know that some students have some grievances about the charm of the campus being lost. But I think it is what you make of it.” She was standing not far from Damilola Sule, a forward on the women’s basketball team. Sule will share a suite with five other players. “We can build a community outside of basketball,” Sule said. “It should be pretty nice.” Nearby, a third student, Jenna Layla, was pulling her belongings out of the back seat of a car. “This feels unreal,” she said. “We walked past this building every day and watched them build it. Now, it’s done. I’m so excited. I have a nice view to look at. I think it will motivate me to do my work.” Staff writer Phillip Molnar contributed to this story.