As the world’s largest private equity firm faces potential losses from a cloudy real estate market, its executives blocked jittery investors from withdrawing their money from one of its real estate funds, while insisting that rent increases and evictions will bolster returns.

Now, the Blackstone Group’s real estate investment trust has received a multibillion-dollar bailout from a source whose employees and students are already suffering through the housing crisis: California’s public university system.

Just months after Blackstone’s real estate investment trust purchased America’s largest owner of private student housing, the same trust received a $4.5 billion infusion from the University of California’s Board of Regents, two of whom have close ties to the company. The investment rewards the financial firm only a few years after the company and its executives spent $5.6 million to kill California ballot initiatives that would have expanded rent control in the state.