by Gail Cornwall, The Hechinger Report
December 9, 2025
LONG BEACH, Calif. — When Edgar Rosales Jr. makes use of the phrase “residence,” the second-year school pupil with a linebacker’s construct isn’t referring to the home he plans to purchase after changing into a nurse or getting a job in public well being. Fairly, the Lengthy Seashore Metropolis School pupil is speaking in regards to the car parking zone he slept in each evening for greater than a 12 months. With Oprah-esque enthusiasm, Rosales calls the opposite college students who use LBCC’s Secure Parking Program his “roommates” or “neighbors.”
Between 8 and 10:30 p.m., these neighbors drive onto the lot, the place workers park through the day. Close by showers open at 6 a.m. Sleeping in a automotive could not sound like a step up, however for Rosales — who dropped out of a Compton highschool greater than 20 years in the past to turn into a truck driver — being handed a key fob to a toilet stocked with bathroom paper and hand cleaning soap was life-altering. He saved the plastic tab on his key ring, although he was supposed to put it in a drop field every morning, as a result of the sight of it introduced consolation; the sense of it between his fingers, laborious and slick, felt like peace.
When Rosales and his son’s mom referred to as it off once more within the fall of 2024, simply after he’d completed a GED program and enrolled at LBCC, he stayed along with his brother for every week or so. However he didn’t wish to be a burden. So at some point after work on the trucking firm — he’d gone part-time since enrolling, although he’d nonetheless usually clock 40 hours every week — he circled the block in his beat-up sedan and parked on the facet of the street, close to some RVs and an encampment. The scariest a part of sleeping in his automotive was the noises, Rosales mentioned: “I heard a canine barking or I heard any person operating round otherwise you see cop lights taking place the road. You see individuals wanting in your automotive.” He couldn’t sleep, not to mention focus. With out the flexibility to wash usually, he started to keep away from individuals to spare them the odor. The automotive grew to become his sanctuary, but in addition, a jail. As he put it, “It begins messing together with your psychological well being.”
First, Rosales dropped a category. A couple of weeks later, he informed his LBCC peer navigator he couldn’t do it anymore and wanted her assist to withdraw. As an alternative, she obtained Rosales signed up for the school’s Secure Parking Program, and every part flipped on its head. With the LBCC lot’s shops and WiFi, the again seat of his automotive morphed right into a research carrel. Campus safety was there to look at over him, not threaten him just like the police had, telling him to maneuver alongside or issuing a quotation that value him a day’s pay. For the primary time in a month, Rosales mentioned, “I might simply sleep with my eyes closed the entire evening.”
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Forty-eight p.c of faculty college students expertise housing insecurity, that means “challenges that stop them from having a secure, inexpensive, and constant place to stay,” suggests the latest Pupil Primary Wants Survey Report from the Hope Heart at Temple College. That quantity rises to 60 p.c for Black college students, 67 p.c for college students who’re parenting and 72 p.c for former foster youth. The issue additionally tends to be worse for veterans and people who determine as LGBTQ+ or have been labeled undocumented, mentioned Sara Abelson, an assistant professor and the Hope Heart’s senior director of training and coaching. Fourteen p.c of the almost 75,000 college students surveyed skilled homelessness, probably the most extreme type of housing insecurity. Different analyses produce related estimates.
In fact, charges differ by establishment. The Hope Heart discovered that housing insecurity at two-year faculties, like LBCC, was about 10 factors larger than at their four-year counterparts. An analogous hole divided establishments that serve excessive proportions of scholars labeled as racial and ethnic minorities from those who don’t. Geography additionally issues: It’s a lot simpler to discover a rental unit in Wilmington, North Carolina, for instance, than in Portland, Oregon. And but, the issue is a nationwide one, mentioned Jillian Sitjar, director of upper training for the nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection, affecting each rural and concrete areas and “not only a California factor.” That’s partly due to a nationwide housing provide scarcity and the truth that eligibility guidelines for inexpensive housing applications usually exclude college students; and it’s partly as a result of the value of faculty has risen nationwide as each authorities funding in larger training and the buying energy of economic help have fallen over the a long time. The second Trump administration’s threatened and precise modifications to Pell Grants, the most important federal pupil help program, haven’t helped, nor have its cuts to the social security web typically and erosion of legal guidelines meant to make sure equitable entry to housing.
For years, faculties have primarily referred homeless college students to shelters, nonprofits and different exterior organizations, however “there’s sort of a shift that’s occurring,” Sitjar mentioned: “Establishments are beginning to look internally, being like, ‘OK, we have to do extra.’” LBCC’s Secure Parking Program is among the most seen of a brand new crop of applications addressing pupil housing insecurity by giving college students unorthodox locations to sleep: automobiles, inns, napping pods, properties of alumni and even an assisted residing facility. What units these stopgap efforts other than longer-term methods — comparable to initiatives to scale back rents, construct housing (together with out of delivery containers), quickly rehouse college students, cowl housing gaps (like summer season and holidays) and present college students with extra monetary help — is that they’re designed to be flawed. School directors know full effectively that Band-Assist applications are inadequate, that they’re catching blood reasonably than addressing the supply of the bleeding. And but, whereas long-term initiatives are underway, what’s woefully insufficient might be fairly a bit higher than nothing.
An oversize sink positive was for Mike Muñoz. A long time earlier than incomes his doctorate and changing into the president of LBCC, Muñoz was a neighborhood school pupil who labored in a mall because the assistant supervisor of a portrait studio. After popping out as homosexual, he couldn’t go residence, after which the household misplaced their home to foreclosures so “there wasn’t a house to return to,” he mentioned. Many nights, he’d crash on pals’ couches, however within the week main as much as payday, he couldn’t afford the gasoline to get there from work. Feeling hopeless, Muñoz would discover a parking spot close to the mall and spend the evening in his automotive, coping with the very same stressors Rosales would endure years later. Within the morning, he’d take a sponge tub within the oversize sink that the studio used to develop movie. His No. 1 concern, after survival, he says, was conserving anybody from discovering out about his homelessness, particularly on campus.
President Muñoz — who’s heat like Rosales but extra self-contained, usually listening so intently as to turn into immobile — mentioned the Secure Parking Program is about greater than offering bodily security for college students who sleep of their autos. Muñoz desires these college students to really feel secure bringing their full selves to varsity, in a manner he didn’t till transferring to a four-year college and transferring into pupil housing. “The psychological load that I used to be carrying, I used to be in a position to set that down,” he mentioned, “and I used to be in a position to then actually focus that vitality” — on courses, on who he wished to be. That’s Muñoz’s reply to those that say emergency housing is a distraction, ancillary to the mission of a school.
Certainly, analysis means that asking a pupil to thrive in school and not using a dependable place to sleep isn’t any extra cheap than asking them to ace a check with out entry to books or lectures. A number of research discover that housing insecurity is related to considerably decrease grades and well-being. Missing a steady housing association has additionally been proven to negatively have an effect on class attendance, full-time enrollment and the chances of getting a level. What’s extra, a 2024 survey discovered that housing-insecure college students rely extra on dangerous credit score companies like payday loans and auto-title loans. This Gordian knot of want and peril, which frequently additionally consists of youngster care obligations and meals insecurity, makes it laborious to show that emergency housing alone will enhance college students’ lives. However Rashida Crutchfield, a professor of social work and government director of the Heart for Equitable Larger Training at California State College, Lengthy Seashore, mentioned, “It’s a kind of ‘clearly’ moments that in the event you home college students, they do higher.”
Associated: Housing insecurity derails foster children’ school goals
When a pandemic-era survey revealed a minimum of 70 LBCC college students residing of their automobiles, Muñoz requested the school’s board to assist him in implementing a secure parking program. They agreed one thing needed to be completed, however points like authorized legal responsibility involved some LBCC workers. Extra worries included the price and that it will imply much less cash for longer-term options, the danger of sending a message that it is OK for college students to should sleep of their automobiles, and “the sky is falling sort of stuff” — visions of medicine, intercourse, trash, urine. However Muñoz pressed, and in 2021 the varsity piloted a program with 13 college students and a startup price range of $200,000 from pandemic reduction funds. That cash coated non-public in a single day safety and paid for the nonprofit Secure Parking LA to coach LBCC workers and assist develop an utility, legal responsibility waiver and extra. The varsity’s services group put in safety cameras, scheduled extra cleansing and discovered how finest to deal with the additional opening and shutting of the lot’s gates.
Comparable efforts sprang up through the pandemic however later shuttered. For instance, a collaboration in Oakland between Laney School and West Facet Missionary Baptist Church wound down as did the secure lot program close to the College of Washington’s Seattle campus. “The funding isn’t there anymore,” defined Marguerita Lightfoot, a professor at OHSU-PSU College of Public Well being. But nonetheless to today, she mentioned of sleeping in automobiles, “There are college students who’re doing that at each establishment.”
Figuring out that, LBCC was decided to maintain the Secure Parking Program operating even after the federal faucet ran dry. The varsity moved this system from its unique location to the lot Rosales would name residence, which has a transparent line of sight from the campus safety workplace. One additional campus safety place changed the non-public firm, chopping LBCC’s total spend in half. In different phrases, Muñoz made it work.
Different faculties have swung totally different hammers on the similar nail. Some faculties and universities with dorms preserve “in-and-out rooms,” beds put aside for short-term, emergency use, the way in which Roosevelt College in Chicago and Fort Lewis School in Colorado do. However Sitjar says quite a lot of purple tape and appreciable expense make in-and-out rooms unusual. For particular pupil populations, some faculties supply year-round housing, like West Chester College’s Promise Program for former foster youth and qualifying homeless college students and a related program at San Diego State College. However “through the summer season, it’s actually, actually, actually laborious for establishments to attempt to hold these rooms put aside,” Sitjar mentioned, since they in any other case generate income by way of summer season camps, reunions and extra, and through the tutorial 12 months imply room-and-board cash.
And neighborhood faculties — which educate the vast majority of American school college students — principally don’t have dorms that permit for this selection. A couple of have teamed up with four-year establishments to accommodate college students at a reduced price. In New Jersey, Rider College hosts college students from Mercer County Neighborhood School. By a pilot program launched in 2019, Massachusetts reimburses four-year campuses for the price of conserving dorm beds accessible for neighborhood school college students experiencing homelessness. A evaluation of this system, by which eight faculties and universities have hosted college students, discovered that 72 p.c of members confirmed tutorial enchancment and much more skilled improved psychological well being.
Different forms of partnerships additionally put roofs over college students’ heads briefly order. Cape Cod Neighborhood School works with a neighborhood well being middle to get college students into resort rooms on days the temperature falls under 32 levels. And Norco School in Southern California is only one of dozens that contracts immediately with a resort. Non secular organizations assist too, comparable to Depaul USA in Philadelphia, which homes homeless school college students in a transformed convent. Round 400 miles south, in Wake County, North Carolina, HOST is a nonprofit that started with members of the NC State College neighborhood inviting college students to maneuver into their properties. And New York Metropolis’s LaGuardia Neighborhood School companions with Airbnb to accommodate college students brief time period, with the corporate reimbursing hosts.
A very uncommon partnership resulted when Winona Well being, a well being care system in Minnesota, acquired a nursing residence that had a mansion sitting on the identical parcel of land. The century-old constructing, Watkins Manor, wasn’t excellent for assisted residing, so in 2021 Winona invited college students from close by faculties to maneuver in for a really low month-to-month hire plus volunteer hours. College students assist senior residents do issues like troubleshoot tech, buy groceries and take part in therapeutic recreation applications. “The residents find it irresistible, the scholars find it irresistible,” mentioned Linda Atkinson, the administrator who oversees this system. Whereas college students don’t must expertise housing insecurity to use, this system has supplied emergency housing for many who have been kicked out of a guardian’s residence, skilled home violence and extra.
Some faculties mix these options, inching towards extra complete assist. At California State College, Sacramento, the CARES program maintains 4 beds in on-campus dorms for quick use. It additionally companions with the Hampton Inn and presents hire subsidies, eviction-avoidance grants (a utility invoice right here, a late payment there) and move-in assist grants (suppose safety deposits), amongst others. Moreover, this system has helped join college students with members of native church buildings prepared to open their properties. Understanding that some college students don’t have automobiles, LBCC too presents way more than the Secure Parking Program. As Crutchfield put it, “Completely different individuals have numerous totally different wants, and we have now to have a buffet of choices.”
At Howard Neighborhood School in Maryland, one smörgåsbord merchandise is a spot to nap. President Daria Willis doesn’t have anyplace to place a shelter for housing-insecure college students, as Harvard, UCLA and the College of Southern California have completed. “We’re just about landlocked,” she defined, “I’ve obtained a hospital on my left facet, and I’ve obtained neighborhoods on the suitable, again, and entrance facet of the campus.” However she wished to do one thing to assist the exhausted college students she walked by on the way in which to her workplace morning after morning. College students who labored evening shifts, parented younger children or didn’t have a spot to sleep at evening have been curled into chairs and draped over benches. In a pilot program, the varsity purchased 5 chairs, generally known as sleeping pods, designed for relaxation. After Willis posted an image on social media of herself stress-free in a single, “it exploded,” she mentioned: “College students have been in them each single second of the day,” usually needing to be requested to depart when buildings closed at 11:30 p.m. So the varsity purchased extra sleeping pods. And extra once more.
Nobody, although, believes napping services and parking tons are actually the reply.
Rosales has leg points and a foul again. “I’m a giant man,” he mentioned as he folded himself into the again seat of his automotive in an origami-like sequence of steps in early September. The WiFi on the lot is spotty, one rest room for greater than a dozen individuals usually means a line, there’s no fridge to retailer leftovers or microwave to reheat them, and Secure Parking Program customers aren’t in a position to sleep in or get to mattress early. Final semester, when he took a category that didn’t get out till 10 p.m., Rosales needed to transfer as quick as his busted knees would carry him to make the cutoff at 10:30. And he was nonetheless homeless. He’d go to a restaurant, spending {dollars} he couldn’t spare and consuming an excessive amount of simply “to really feel like a traditional particular person,” Rosales mentioned. He’d say hey to all people and strike up a dialog along with his server, to attempt to “be regular for a minute.”
But regardless of its limitations, the Secure Parking Program let Rosales “breathe, calm down, proceed on,” he mentioned. And the lot provided an opportunity to construct neighborhood. He started encouraging new arrivals to attach: “Belief me, we’ll show you how to,” Rosales would say. They usually do usually require assist like that. Even when campus sources exist, two-thirds of scholars in want lack consciousness about accessible helps, the Hope Heart researchers concluded. Stigma is a part of the issue. As Rosales put it, “We’re scared that we’re going to get judged or somebody’s going to offer us pity or give us a glance … like, ‘Oh, there goes the homeless one.’” He didn’t even inform his household about his homelessness. In reality, Rosales’ peer navigator was the primary to know — and he solely had a kind of to show to due to LBCC’s surveys and focused outreach.
Lately, Rosales organized a free breakfast to attach his “roommates and neighbors” with campus sources and one another. He felt horrible that he nonetheless couldn’t do a lot for the son he’d barely seen since transferring out, particularly after being laid off by the trucking firm on Christmas Eve. However gathering members within the Secure Parking Program, serving to them — now he might add worth to somebody. And he felt valued by LBCC, having been given complete assist and case administration meant to search out an on-ramp to steady housing, in addition to cash for automotive repairs. (Every year, between $23,000 and $115,000 from the LBCC Basis — which swelled after a $30 million present from MacKenzie Scott, the philanthropist previously married to Jeff Bezos — goes to college students for automobile registration, insurance coverage, repairs and daytime parking permits.) Rosales felt like he mattered at LBCC, even after bringing his entire self to campus, simply as Muñoz had hoped.
In some unspecified time in the future within the nation’s historical past, homelessness on school campuses was nonexistent, a rounding error when it did happen, as a result of college students needed to have wealth behind them to entry larger training. As efforts to democratize admissions and attendance (just like the GI Invoice) have borne fruit, “extra of those that are dealing with these points are attending to establishments,” mentioned Abelson, the Hope Heart’s senior director of training and coaching, combining with housing and funding shortages to create want that “has largely gone beneath the radar and unrecognized.” Efforts to equalize alternative have been inadequate, and but, they’ve made it attainable for somebody like Muñoz to graduate after which rise by the ranks. They’ve made it attainable for his days of rationing gasoline and sink-bathing to open an establishment’s eyes to the necessity for a web to catch college students who’re slipping off its ivory tower, and for Muñoz to push to create one, even when it have to be stitched collectively from imperfect supplies.
However the actuality is that almost all of faculties have huge holes of their nets, or to return to Crutchfield’s metaphor, they don’t supply any of those emergency housing dishes, not to mention the entire unfold. For probably the most half, faculties and universities nonetheless simply create an inventory of sources and refer college students out, suggesting they struggle their luck with native shelters and Craigslist. It’s insufficient. “Our shelter programs are overtaxed,” Crutchfield mentioned, “there’s simply not sufficient capability.” And even when there may be, “college students don’t see shelter programs as for them,” she mentioned. In some methods, they’re proper: Shelter guidelines, together with the necessity to queue up and switch lights off when there’s homework nonetheless to be completed, usually conflict with college students’ wants.
“If I fall down and I’m bleeding, undoubtedly get me medical consideration, get me a Band-Assist,” Crutchfield mentioned. “But when the street is damaged, and that’s why individuals hold falling down, it’s a must to take care of the street.” So sure to secure parking, she mentioned, but in addition, “What are we going to do subsequent?”
Along with constructing housing, taking part in fast rehousing fashions and advocating for monetary help that covers the true value of faculty, some faculties have employed homeless liaisons, workers members devoted to aiding college students experiencing homelessness. In response to SchoolHouse Connection, California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland and Tennessee require faculties to ascertain these roles. Maine encourages doing so, and California, Minnesota and Washington even put aside funds that can be utilized to pay for them. The influence seems to be important. In Washington, 22 out of 25 neighborhood faculties surveyed mentioned they supply some form of emergency housing. Sitjar mentioned, “For establishments and states which have these people, which have these roles, we’re then seeing these faculties make the actually distinctive options of addressing housing.”
She pointed to bipartisan federal laws, two payments which are anticipated to be reintroduced this session, that might require homeless liaisons in addition to power faculties to develop plans for housing throughout tutorial breaks, do a greater job of figuring out college students fighting homelessness and extra. One of many payments would replace the Low-Earnings Housing Tax Credit score program to permit full-time college students to stay in LIHTC housing in the event that they’ve skilled homelessness throughout the final seven years. Abelson mentioned the Hope Heart and others assist this reform in addition to related efforts aimed toward “lowering the numerous limitations that college students face to accessing [government] advantages.”
Nowadays, Rosales nonetheless eats his emotions generally, he mentioned, however “it’s slowly getting higher as a result of I see a therapist each two weeks by the varsity.” When LBCC informed him in September that he’d been provided housing by a fast rehousing program referred to as Jovenes — a two-bedroom, two-bath to be shared with three roommates — Rosales started to cry, from reduction but in addition from worry. “I by no means thought I used to be going to get out of right here,” he mentioned of the Secure Parking Program. “That is my residence, that is the place I stay, that is the place I’ve been — holidays, weekends, a birthday.” He finds consolation in figuring out that the lot is all the time an choice, as it’s for the handfuls of LBCC college students residing on the brink who’ve signed up for this system simply in case. However he doesn’t sleep there anymore. “I’m not going again,” Rosales mentioned, and for the primary time, he believes in his skill to make that occur. He can really feel in his truck-weary bones that he’ll graduate, that he’ll get that home he’s been dreaming about: “I’m transferring forward.”
Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, by way of Sign at CarolineP.83 or on electronic mail at preston@hechingerreport.org.
This story about emergency housing was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, impartial information group centered on inequality and innovation in training. Join the Hechinger publication.
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