The property at 4811 Yerba Santa Drive, located in Alvarado Estates, just west of SDSU’s campus, is generously labeled a single-family home. It is, in fact, a walled-off mansion, complete with a circular driveway, four bedrooms, five bathrooms, pool, putting green, gym, four-car garage and an extra garage big enough for an RV.
This is the modest home of SDSU President Adela de la Torre, who lives there rent, mortgage and property tax-free. University-provided housing is considered a perk of the job, but contrasts with the image of state universities as underfunded institutions primarily serving students from lower-income backgrounds. A school leader who lives in a multimillion-dollar mansion is disconnected from the economic realities her students experience and cannot make policy decisions in their best interests.
We shouldn’t be comfortable with our school’s top executive living in extravagant conditions while everyone else on campus faces down budget cuts and hiring freezes. The university’s decision to purchase the house – which they paid $2.3 million for in 2017 and is now valued at around $3.7 million – deserves more public scrutiny.
As the value of this mansion has gone up, so too has the cost of living for SDSU students. San Diego was recently ranked the 10th most expensive city for renters by a national report from Zumper. SDSU students are also facing CSU tuition increases of 6% every year until the 2028-29 academic year, making higher education even less affordable than it already is.
Housing and food insecurity are a reality for many students on campus. According to a study conducted at SDSU in 2020, 59% of students were housing unstable and 51% of students reported food insecurity.
Meanwhile, the president of the school lives in a mansion for free and pays no property taxes. This is because the home is owned by Aztec Shops, a nonprofit auxiliary of SDSU.
Aztec Shops owns and operates SDSU dining, the campus bookstore, fraternity row and other large student housing properties. Because they reinvest profits into the university, Aztec Shops qualifies for the public school tax exemption, making most of its properties 100% tax-free. This includes the president’s mansion.
In the past, Aztec Shops even received a welfare tax exemption as a charity. However, this exemption was revoked by the state in 2018 after the California State Board of Equalization found it did not meet the requirements for a charitable organization. Its welfare exemption was canceled less than a year after they purchased the president’s new mansion.
That forced Aztec Shops to fall back on the public school exemption. The code from the Board of Equalization reads, “To qualify for exemption, property must be used exclusively for educational purposes. This purpose includes facilities that are reasonably necessary to further the primary educational purpose of a university or college, such as college- or university-provided faculty and student housing.”
It is not reasonably necessary for this exemption to apply to a mansion, especially because it does nothing to improve the quality of education for students at SDSU. But, thanks to the public school exemption, Aztec Shops only pays $46 in fixed charges annually for its mansion property.
Tax exemptions like these are helping people like de la Torre build and maintain their wealth, while owning property becomes increasingly unattainable for the average San Diegan. The property tax system as a whole tends to benefit those who need help the least. This is especially apparent at Alvarado Estates, the gated neighborhood where the president lives less than a mile west of campus.
According to data gathered from the San Diego Association of Governments, the county’s metropolitan planning authority, as analyzed by a local activist and statistician, Alvarado Estates pays some of the lowest property taxes in the city. The property value for single-family homes in San Diego averages $90.32 per square foot, while in this gated community, it averages $20.08 per square foot.
The exceptionally low property value on these mansions appears to be a result of Prop 13, which limits property tax increases to 2% per year, even if property value increases more than that. This means homes can increase greatly in estimated value while the owner continues to pay little in taxes. This greatly benefits those who already own homes but keeps renters out of homeownership.
Wealthy residents of communities like Alvarado Estates, such as de la Torre, pay much less in taxes to the city than they should. Today, the city faces a $258 million budget deficit, and the projected cuts to public services like recreation centers and libraries will be felt most by the poor, including student populations.
Budget cuts are also being made at the university. De la Torre recently announced the university has frozen almost all hiring and is dipping into reserves in order to manage more than $28 million in one-time cuts.
In a letter sent to faculty and staff on March 20, she also said university divisions are reducing costs by cutting non-essential travel, suspending multi-year projects and reviewing contracts. This will directly affect the quality of education and experience at SDSU.
The president’s mansion may not be the biggest drain on the school budget, especially with its tax exemption, but it is a prime example of how universities use the law to protect the interests of the wealthy, exploit the competitive housing system and widen the gap between the rich and poor. We cannot passively tolerate how our school grants extravagant privilege to some and forces austerity on everyone else.
