With boxes still unpacked and shelves yet to be filled, the Basic Needs Center has moved south from the Bookstore Building’s second floor to its now-permanent location near Lot L.

The center, which includes the Warrior Pantry and Warrior Wardrobe, reopened at the newly constructed El Camino Commons, located across Redondo Beach Boulevard, just a few weeks before the fall 2025 semester began.

“We were anxious to get in so that we could get unpacked and get set up prior to the fall semester starting,” student success coordinator Sharonda Barksdale said.

Basic Needs Center staff said the significant size decrease for the storefront has heavily impacted their ability to serve visitors.

Student services specialist Jocelyn Rivera, who manages the Warrior Pantry, said that the pantry saw less student visits during the first week this semester when compared to last semester.

However, the demand for its resources remains the same.

“Week one was rough,” Rivera said.

The food pantry was able to service up to five people at a time while at its Bookstore location, whereas now only two people can enter the pantry at a time.

“It’s frustrating to see we can’t service the amount of student and community members that we were servicing up there [at the previous location],” Christian Bustillo, a student worker at the Warrior Pantry, said.

The center’s staff have already received complaints from students and community members regarding heavy wait times, with some reporting waiting for up to an hour in the sun before being able to enter and receive items.

In a 2023 survey pulled from 88 different community colleges, including El Camino College, the Community College League of California found that two out of every three community college students deal with at least one basic need insecurity.

Nearly half of struggle with food insecurity, meaning they worry that their food will run out before their money comes in and cannot afford balanced meals, according to the survey.

Barksdale said food insecurities and housing insecurities were not prevalent among students when the college was originally built, so creating a space for something like the Basic Needs Center was not needed originally.

All 115 campus-based California community colleges now have Basic Needs Centers, as required by Assembly Bill 132, which required all campuses to create one by 2022.

When ECC’s center opened in early 2023, it was expected to relocate to the El Camino Commons by spring 2024, according to a press release. However, construction on the commons was not finished until June 2025.

Before Basic Needs Centers were created, student-led efforts created the Warrior Pantry in late 2017, when it was located in Physics Building Room 116, according to prior reporting by The Union.

Despite being on a college campus, the Warrior Pantry also has a duty to serve its community members through their partnership with the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, which lists ECC as a public food pantry.

For the time being, the lines in front of the Basic Needs Center will remain as staff find more ways to deal with the change more efficiently.

“We are here. We were put here. We are just trying to make the best of the situation,” Barksdale said.

Basic Needs Center Hours
Monday to Thursday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Warrior Pantry and Warrior Wardrobe hours
Tuesdays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesdays and Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. During summer 2025, the Tuesday hours changed from 12-5 p.m. to 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Editor-in-Chief Nikki Yunker contributed to this story.