A couple of months after receiving options for how to proceed with a potential low-income student housing project, the Santa Clarita Community College District board of trustees is expected Wednesday to decline to proceed with those plans.  In doing so, the board, which oversees College of the Canyons, would be disenrolling as one of the 12 community college districts that was selected to receive more than $61 million as part of the Affordable Student Housing Grant that was later altered to be funded through lease-revenue bonds.  “The delayed and restructured funding model will make it so the district will not be able to cover the total costs associated with constructing and operating the proposed student housing, thus requiring the district to allocate additional general fund resources to support these expenses,” the draft resolution reads.  According to the presentation provided with the agenda, the college applied for the grant in 2021 and was approved by the state in 2022. A design of the potential project, currently slated to be built on what is now parking lot 6 at the college’s Valencia campus, was then created this year that would have 100 units and 209 beds.  But the change from grant funding to lease-revenue bonds had a caveat in that a couple of buildings owned by the college — namely the Takeda Science Center and the Student Service Learning Resource Center, both located at the COC Canyon Country campus — would have to be designated as collateral.  College officials also found earlier this year that the nearly $62 million would not be enough to sustain the project as presently designed. Should the college go through with the plans, it would require an additional $5 million from the general fund.  In order to save that additional cost, the project would have to be downsized and a bed reduction study would be needed to determine if the decrease in revenue would match up with the operational expenses with the reduced size.  If the college were to move forward with the full project, it is estimated it would receive about $9,500 in income, after factoring in a reserve fund, in the first year of operation in 2028. By 2032, that number would rise to about $10,600.  Those numbers would include a 5% market vacancy, four free beds for resident advisors and $250 per bed per year for repair and replacement reserves.  And as the ultimate goal of the project is for low-income students to have affordable housing, per the state’s guidelines, it would be impossible to make up any difference with an increase in rent, the agenda states.  “Based on the current design, cost of construction, and ongoing operation and maintenance cost associated with the student housing project,” the agenda reads, “the administration does not feel it is fiscally responsible to build the student housing structure as currently planned. The current plans cannot be built within the $61.8 million budget.”  Current estimated spending on the project is at just under $1.5 million, most of that going to architectural firm Westberg White for the design, with nearly $3.5 million in interest earned to date.  “The board expresses its ongoing commitment to exploring alternative solutions and funding opportunities that will support the development of affordable student housing in a sustainable and fiscally responsible manner,” the draft resolution reads.  While no guarantees were made at the previous meeting when the options were initially presented, board member Sebastian Cazares, a former COC student, and Sanjana Sudhir, the student trustee, both said that having some sort of student housing would be beneficial.  “Student housing is something that a lot of us have been talking about, and I know a lot of my friends don’t have homes when they go back from classes, and this is just a project that I feel that I’m so grateful that COC is looking at,” Sudhir previously said. “Even though we may not have the funds right now and we may need to reduce beds at least, at least for 100 students, if we can provide them a home and if we can provide them a warm place to sleep, that would be satisfactory for me.”  Wednesday’s meeting is slated to begin at 5 p.m. at the Dr. Dianne G. Van Hook University Center, room 301, located at 26455 Rockwell Canyon Road in Valencia. A closed session is also scheduled for 4 p.m.  To watch the meeting virtually, visit tinyurl.com/yyajtynk.  The post COC expected to pass on student housing  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.