Summer Intern Housing Program by Conference & Hospitality Services

This June, Conference & Hospitality Services officially launched our inaugural Summer Intern Housing program in the San Joaquin Villages apartment complex, a program several years in the making. Designed to provide housing to college students interning or working in the Santa Barbara area over the summer, we housed 16 interns with stays between 30 and 77 nights.

After COVID delayed our planned 2020 launch of Summer Intern Housing, we used the intervening years to conduct additional research and planning. We connected with other UCs that offered an intern housing program, attended sessions about intern housing at national conferences, benchmarked pricing, and refined our operational framework.

We reached out to local companies, and Arthrex California Technology, Inc. a medical device and technology company, partnered with us to provide housing for eight interns. The other eight students who stayed with us had internships with UCSB, Google, and Umbra Space.

To help the interns feel connected, they each received a packet containing a welcome letter from our office, resources, and important contact information, as well as a guest meal ticket so they could sample the Dining Commons, hopefully enticing them to dine there for additional meals.

Summer Intern Housing exceeded our initial occupancy goals and generated $58,000 in revenue. We wanted to give a special thank you to the San Joaquin Housekeeping team for their flexibility in prepping additional apartments at the last minute to give more interns the opportunity to stay on campus this summer. 

Energized by the success of this pilot program, which we shared as one of our goals during the 2024 Reset Meeting, we are already planning for expansion, particularly when San Benito comes online.

To learn more, visit the Summer Intern Housing website.