Belmont Shore Student Housing Near CSULB, Compared

Long Beach gives CSULB students an unusual amount of choice for a commuter campus, and the most tempting option is also the least dorm-like: Belmont Shore student housing puts you a few blocks from the sand, on or near 2nd Street, with a bike ride to campus instead of a walk. The appeal is real, and so are the trade-offs, which mostly come down to permit parking, summer crowds, and paying more for the same square footage you could get a few miles inland. This post compares Belmont Shore and Belmont Heights against the blocks right by campus, Los Altos, downtown Long Beach and Bixby Knolls, using listings that are open right now. Start with the Long Beach off-campus housing page.

Begin your search at Off-Campus Universe, where you can browse current listings near Long Beach by bedroom count, price and distance from campus, and message landlords directly. Sort by distance first, because the difference between a five-minute and a twenty-minute commute shows up in rent and in how often you actually make an eight a.m. class.

Here is what is live right now. 3440 E Ransom is listed at $1,025/month for a 1bd/1ba and is recorded as under five minutes from campus, which makes it the cheapest close-in option in this set and the simplest to budget, since a one-bedroom has nothing to split. 1074 Redondo Avenue is listed at $1,060/month for a 2bd/2ba, also under five minutes out. That price and that bedroom count do not obviously match, so treat the number as a question rather than a fact and run it both ways: if $1,060 is the whole-unit rent, two roommates pay $530 each, which would be remarkable for this area; if it is the price of one room, two rooms bring the unit to $2,120 and each person still pays $1,060. Ask the landlord which it is in writing before you budget around it. Condo in down town Long Beach is a studio condo at $1,900/month, a private-space option at roughly double the Ransom one-bedroom with nobody to share the cost.

Beautiful Cozy 4 Bedroom house needs the same treatment and then some. It is listed at $3,947/month and recorded as a 4bd/2ba house rented by the room, which are two different pricing models pointing at one figure. Run both. If $3,947 is the total for the house, four housemates pay about $987 each and eight sharing rooms pay about $493, which competes well against everything else here. If $3,947 is what a single room costs, it is wildly out of step with the rest of this list and you should not consider it until the landlord explains the number in writing. The general rule holds across Long Beach: when a listing pairs a by-the-room description with a whole-house-sized number, get clarification first, then ask for the per-person total including utilities so every place you tour is being compared on the same basis.

Where CSULB Students Actually Live

The blocks immediately around campus, off Bellflower, Atherton and 7th Street, are the walk-and-bike zone: mostly older apartment buildings and small houses, and they turn over fast every summer. Both of the sub-five-minute listings above sit in this band. Los Altos, just north and east, is quieter and more residential, with houses and duplexes, a few shopping centers, and a short drive or bus ride in. Belmont Heights sits between campus and the water on a slight rise, with older character apartments and a mix of duplexes, and it often prices a little below the flats. Belmont Shore is that flat stretch below it running down to the beach and along 2nd Street. Downtown Long Beach is the urban option: apartment towers and converted buildings, transit, restaurants, and the longest commute of the group at roughly fifteen to twenty-five minutes by car, or a straightforward ride on the Metro A Line plus a bus. Bixby Knolls, further north, is the most suburban and typically gets you the most space per dollar, and it is realistically a car neighborhood if you are commuting to campus daily.

Belmont Shore Student Housing: 2nd Street, Bikes and Permit Districts

Belmont Shore student housing is organized around 2nd Street, which is the neighborhood's spine. Coffee, restaurants, a grocery store, a gym and most of the reasons people want to live here are on it or within a block of it. The commute to CSULB is the first thing to test. It is a genuinely good bike ride, largely flat, roughly fifteen to twenty-five minutes depending on where you start and how many lights you catch, with the short climb from the shore up into Belmont Heights as the only real effort. Driving is quicker in theory and worse in practice at peak hours, and campus parking is its own expense and its own queue. The second thing to test is where your car will sleep. Much of this area sits inside residential permit parking districts, which means curb parking is restricted by time or requires a permit tied to the address, and the number of permits a building can claim is limited. Ask specifically how many permits come with the unit, whether guests can park, and what happens on summer weekends when the beach crowd arrives. Rent here generally runs above Los Altos or Bixby Knolls for comparable space, and the honest question is whether daily access to the beach and 2nd Street is worth that gap to you. For students who will use it several times a week, it usually is.

Four Checks Before You Sign in Long Beach

• Confirm whether the quoted rent covers the whole unit or a single room, and get it in writing before any deposit changes hands.

• Ask about parking permits by number, not in general. One permit for a three-person household is a very different lease than three permits.

• Ride or drive the commute once at class time. A fifteen-minute map estimate from Belmont Shore and a fifteen-minute reality are not always the same thing.

• Price utilities and laundry separately. An older beach-adjacent apartment with no in-unit laundry and a window air conditioner costs more to live in than the rent implies.

Ready to find your place? Browse all listings at Off-Campus Universe.

This article is provided by an independent housing resource and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by California State University, Long Beach.