Edith Carrigan and José Manuel Redondo Hidalgo are part of a pilot program, Berkeley Home Match, which connects UC Berkeley retiree homeowners with Berkeley students looking for housing with rent under the market rate.
When UC Berkeley visiting scholar José Manuel Redondo Hidalgo was looking for housing in the Bay Area, he was blown away at the cost of living.
“I couldn’t believe how expensive it was,” Hidalgo says. “There was no way I could afford $1,300 for a room in a house, on top of other living expenses.”
But when he came across a posting for Berkeley Home Match on a campus housing listserv, he thought it could be the answer to his predicament.
Berkeley Home Match is a program that matches retired UC Berkeley faculty and staff who own homes with Berkeley graduate students, post-docs and visiting scholars who are looking for a place to live with rent that’s under the market rate. Run by the Berkeley Retirement Center — in partnership with Ashby Village, and with grants from the Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund and the nonprofit, Covia — the pilot program is in its first year and has already made 11 successful matches.
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UC Berkeley photo by Irene Yi