“All we have now ever wished was a legally binding dedication that they add housing earlier than they add extra college students,” mentioned Mr. Bokovoy, the president of the nonprofit and a former funding banker with a home close to the campus that’s value an estimated $1.5 million. “That is about preserving Berkeley’s tradition and variety.”

The College of California system has on-campus beds for about 106,000 college students, leaving roughly two out of three to compete for off-campus housing in a number of the nation’s costliest housing markets. In Berkeley, the college homes about 22 % of its undergraduates, fewer than every other campus within the system.

Though college students make up greater than 1 / 4 of Berkeley’s inhabitants, town, restricted by its city locale and hooked up to its low-rise aesthetic, has till latest years resisted improvement. Lease for a two-bedroom residence runs about $4,000 month-to-month “and that’s for one which isn’t even good,” mentioned Ms. Grasp, the coed authorities officer.

In 2005, the college projected that enrollment could be 33,450 by 2020, a quantity that turned the premise for a long-range plan for growing the campus. However in 2017, Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods found that enrollment had already outstripped that estimate by 30 %.

After the college introduced a plan to transform an acre of parking into new educational area and school and graduate housing, Mr. Bokovoy’s group sued once more, this time with the Metropolis of Berkeley. They argued that the college’s environmental affect report — which discovered that the extra college students had no important impacts — was insufficient.

Collectively, the lawsuits turned the premise of a package deal of complicated litigation over whether or not the college had adequately studied and mitigated the affect of its complete enrollment. Final summer time, a Superior Court docket issued an uncommon order that rolled again and capped the college’s enrollment at its 2020-21 degree of 42,357 college students till the varsity considerably expanded the setting examine in its long-range development plan.

The choice nonetheless could possibly be reversed, however due to the order — which was left in place by the California Supreme Court docket final week — the college needed to reduce the variety of college students coming to campus within the fall.