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An example of an "Urban Village" featuring a pedestrian-oriented community serving both commercial and residential use.

Housing-starved students in University City say they're fighting for elbow room with older, more established residents.

"They're calling us transient - the new word is migratory now," said Aidan Lin at a city workshop last week, where he played a video of a rowdy planning committee meeting to show how far things have gone. Students were talked over loudly, and a voice denounced the "plague of students."

The University Community Plan update is unfolding amid a housing gap that somehow has to find room for employees of UCSD - the region's largest employer - as well as thousands of students who can't find housing on campus.

According to the city, the university had 25,000 full-time employees and 38,000 students in 2018.

Lin, who is on the Community Plan Update subcommittee, is the executive director of Our Time To Act United, a youth group that has been calling for even higher density than is now being planned - while opponents actively try to exclude them from the process, he said.

Their members have been accused "online and to our faces that we were either paid or manipulated by developers and lobbyists, simply because we are active and caring about our community's future."

A coalition of other advocates are also seeking the highest possible density to adhere to the city's Climate Action Plan and make the most of the $2 billion dollar trolley investment.

"It's not every day you see the Labor Council, the Chamber of Commerce, Climate Action Committee and the Housing Federation all speaking together on an issue," said Jessie O'Sullivan, with Circulate San Diego.

Early on, he said, the density was going to be higher. Opposition over the course of the discussion draft has caused it to shrink.

"The city has been whittling down the number of homes allowed in the newly proposed scenarios." And that doesn't help affordability. A single family home in University City costs about $1.5 million dollars. A $330,000 down payment - about $10,000 a month - would be more than his entire pre-tax salary, he said.

On the other hand, he pointed to a new apartment building where a two-bedroom costs $4,000 a month. Market rate. Expensive, but by splitting rent, he said, it could be affordable for someone earning San Diego's median income of about $75,000. "We need to recognize that those market rate apartments are middle class housing for my generation."

Melanie Cone, speaking for Biocom California, said she was one of the few members of the plan update subcommittee who was representing the university, with its many life sciences employees. Most business seats are people who live in, or own property in University City, she said.

"We want to make sure our employees don't have to live in Temecula or Fallbrook and commute into the city every day."

Those against the proposed density increase say the city is built out, bursting at the seams, yet being tasked with taking on as much as 30 percent of the city's housing.

"The density proposed in the discussion draft is still too high," said University City resident Linda Beresford. The plan would more than double the population, she said. "But the city has no guarantee it can or will build any of the proposed infrastructure."

She objected to the video shown by Lin, saying the clips weren't representative of the "hours of meetings" and "certainly not the most recent meetings."

At a meeting in March 2022, Beresford said that allowing "transient UCSD students to have as much say as people who have invested here is not a true representation of resident desires."