John Muir College senior Blane Kidane and her two roommates never expected the letter they got in the mail last spring.

The letter, from the management at Costa Verde Village apartments, announced plans to convert the 1,257-unit complex into condominiums.

Although the rental office claimed that plans wouldn’t commence for at least a year-and-a-half, there are no guarantees. The sudden arrival of move-out notices could leave Kidane and dozens of other UCSD students who live in the apartments scrambling for new homes.

“I was annoyed because this is where like half of UCSD lives,” Kidane said. “Where are they supposed to go?”

Costa Verde is next in line for a slew of condo conversions that have popped up around La Jolla in the past year and a half, forcing students out of their apartments to compete anew for a place in the pool of rentals still available near campus.

Condo conversion supplies a number of headaches for students, according to Elyce Morris, an attorney at Student Legal Services who has advised many students through the conversion process. Not only has relocation been a main stressor, but conversion construction can occur while students are still present in their unit, creating a major distraction. In addition, Morris said, students have been frustrated by poor information from leasing managers regarding their legal rights and benefits.

Under San Diego law, developers are only required to notify tenants of the intent to convert to condominiums 180 days before their rentals are terminated, and do not have to issue exact move-out dates at that time. Tenants who have occupied their unit for over a year must be warned 60 days prior to move-out, while all other renters get a 30-day notification.

As long as developers comply with the city’s minimum standards, they can disregard student concerns in favor of maximizing profits.

“Most students have better things to do than argue with their landlords,” Morris said. “They cut their losses and move,”

Scott Weidman has lived through the difficulty of condo conversions before. A third-year linguistics graduate student, Weidman was forced to move out of the apartment he shared with his wife at the Venetian on Nobel Drive in late 2004.

“It’s an extremely unpleasant thing to be forced to move out,” Weidman said. “It was certainly a distraction from school.”

Four months before he was notified of the conversion, the complex began to remove above-ground planters with noisy jackhammers under the pretext of “beautifying” the grounds for its residents, Weidman said.

Then, upon notification of the pending conversion, Weidman said that he and his wife were offered monetary incentives to move out “early.” The practice of developers attempting to cut past red tape with money is common, according to Morris.

“It’s a way for developers to speed up the process,” Morris said. “If you can be flexible, it can work to your benefit too.”

But for Weidman, developers failed to mention that certain low-income residents were entitled under San Diego law to receive even more money in the form of relocation assistance than was offered to move out early.

In 2004, the benefits would have been equal to three months of rent for residents of a two-person household with an annual income less than $50,700, or the median household income for the area. Such monies could have been a windfall for qualifying students —— if they only knew to ask for them.

Unfortunately, the majority of students don’t read the fine-print in their leases or seek legal counsel, Morris said.

The condo trend is causing the rental pool to shrink in La Jolla, forcing students to live farther and farther from campus, according to Deborah Gordon, manager of Commuter Student Services. They are then stuck driving to campus, resulting in added conflict between students and already-taxed university parking and transportation services.

“Students are losing their roots to the UCSD community,” Gordon said.

Rental prices appear to be on the rise in those apartments that are left, making it even harder for students to continue to live in the La Jolla area, Gordon said.

However, increases in rental prices are not directly related to condo sales, according to Dan O’Keefe of Realty Executives of La Jolla. Even though rentals are temporarily turned into sales, speculative buyers will frequently rent the unit back out to students.

Some students may even benefit from the improvements that are made when an old, run-down apartment is converted into a condo and then rented back out, complete with new carpets, balconies and granite countertops, O’Keefe said

In addition, student renters have the first right-of-refusal to buy their unit when it is converted to be sold, often for thousands less than its list price for the public. Morris says she does occasionally see parents snapping up the deals, but the information may be of little relevance to the majority of students forced to relocate.

“It’s not like college students can afford to buy condos,” Kidane said. “It just inconveniences a lot of people.”