UCI On-Campus Housing Problems

This morning, I found a flyer on my door, from a group pushing for a rent reduction in Palo Verde.
The justification is that Verano had the landscape cost increase cut from their budget, but Palo Verde Housing refuses to cut the same item from the PV budget. They apparently want to do a shady deal to keep the money.
The flyer says in part:

Palo Verde Residents: Want to reduce your rent by 4%?
Verano Place rents will increase by 4% instead of the initially planned 8% next year, because UCI corrected a mistake in the budget regarding landscaping expenses (Oops!). Even though the Palo Verde budget contains the same mistake, PV refuses to correct the budget and reduce our rent. All we are asking for is equal treatment with Verano residents.
Why should the rent be lowered in PV?
PV plans to collect more rent than necessary to operate our community. You will pay up to $792 more rent a year than is necessary! Palo Verde has already become too expensive for many graduate students. Because not enough graduate students can afford PV, UCI chose to fill our apartments with 89 undergrads as well as staff and postdocs.
What can I do?
If you want to lower your rent, we need your help. The Housing Administration and Vice Chancellor Gomez have refused to pass on the savings from the landscaping contract and insist on collecting more rent than necessary to operate PV. Please write to Executive Vice Chancellor (EVC) Gottfredson that you disagree with this practice. Ask him to instruct Vice Chancellor Gomez to correct our rents in PV just as he has corrected rents in Verano.

I have sent a letter to EVC Gottfredson. Please do the same. A sample letter is at www.lowerrent.org.

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