Joshua Tree Hall and Hibiscus Hall, also known as buildings 22 and 23, are newly established dormitories at CSUN, located on Lassen and Zelzah. These facilities began housing first-year students on Aug. 26.
The housing project was a collaboration between C.W. Driver Companies and the design firm A.C. Martin Partners, with a total cost of $56 million. The university received a $37.5 million housing grant from the state, increasing the total project estimate to $72.9 million.
Joshua Tree and Hibiscus Hall are both five-story buildings that feature laundry facilities, a community living room and a community kitchen, with four floors dedicated to student living. The two buildings differ; Joshua Tree Hall includes a few other multipurpose rooms, while Hibiscus Hall houses administrative offices for student housing facilities operations and mail services.
These new dormitories were created to support the first-year students, as stated on CSUN’s official Facebook post. Since they opened, these new 60,290 square-foot dormitories have increased CSUN’s housing capacity by 6%.
“The AC’s nice. I like that this building is really close to the dining hall,” Linnea Anderson, a first-year film and CTVA major, said. “The laundry is accessible, the rooms are clean, those are the main things. It’s a nice building in general.”
Anderson has been living at Joshua Tree Hall for one month, but said that at the start, she faced a big adjustment period due to feeling isolated and homesick.
“It’s been good, honestly, since I’m in one of the new dorms. It’s a lot nicer ‘cause it’s brand new,” Anderson said. “I think it’s just the adjustment to not living at home, not being in your room was a bit hard, but I’ve gotten used to it and it’s been fun.”
While the new dorms feature many modern updates, a few students living in the older dorms have expressed struggles or doubts about the new dorms.
Henry Locke, a third-year computer science major and Woodruff Hall resident, said, “I think that the new dorms are problematic because they built two new buildings but didn’t build any new parking structures to accommodate the new students.”
Residents of older dormitories said they also face many quality-of-life issues, as well as having to call maintenance on many occasions.
“We’ve had to call maintenance multiple times to fix our ventilator fan over the stove, fix the oven and our AC too,” said Locke, who’s lived at Woodruff Hall since 2023. “Recently, last week, we had ants that were coming from the ceiling – I’m on the second floor too. Other than those issues, the apartment is good and the appliances are good when they’re working.”
Third-year English major Victoria Gonzales, who has been a resident at Woodruff Hall since mid-August, has also faced issues while living in her dormitory.
“My bathroom flooded once, the cabinet doesn’t shut right, blinds don’t fully close, the sink wasn’t working properly,” Gonzales said, but confirmed all have been repaired by maintenance.
Dorm residents did have positive feedback about maintenance efforts. According to them, when they report issues, the maintenance team quickly resolves them.
Students have also faced issues with their digital IDs, also known as MataCards. The MataCards tend to malfunction and cannot be read by scanners or disappear altogether from students’ wallets on their phones. Thus, students have to constantly re-add the ID to their phones.
“Every few weeks, the ID removes itself from my Google Wallet, so I often have to re-add it,” a user on Reddit said in a post about this issue. “The security guard at the gate had to look me up with my ID number because obviously I didn’t have an ID to scan; something that wouldn’t be a problem if I could just pull out my physical wallet, that I own, and use my physical ID, that I [would] own, to get into the building that I PAY for.”
Despite the complications and frustrations of the older dormitories, they also offer a convenient option for students. Yet, students feel many of these issues could have been prevented beforehand.
“I felt like CSUN did make an effort, but they could’ve done a better job,” Locke said. “I understand it is very difficult to go from building to building and find every problem, but like the ant problem, I felt like that should’ve been resolved before I moved in.”
