The Effects of Housing Insecurity on Bay Area Students
About 250,000 California students do not have a place to sleep at night, which amounts to about 4% of all students in California– that’s half the population of Sacramento. In San Francisco Unified School District alone, there are nearly 2500 unhoused students. These numbers do not even take into account the number of students who experience housing instability, which is undoubtedly a much higher figure. Even when scarce rapid housing programs are available, they often relocate students to areas outside of their original communities, disrupting their existing lives, relationships, and their educational trajectories. Many homeless and housing insecure students also experience other factors that make them more vulnerable to adverse experiences, including mental health struggles, poverty, racism, abuse, and other factors. Homeless students face many unique struggles that not all students face. The system is not built to help students experiencing homelessness, and must be reformed.
Adolescence can be a difficult time in anyone's life. Students often have to juggle many competing responsibilities, but housing insecurity should not be one of them. The lack of affordable housing in the Bay Area comes up time and time again in discussions about student homelessness. Additionally, many students face more barriers to housing by virtue of being minors. Unhoused students face a lot of adversity both in their educational careers and their search for stable housing. There is a ton of work we must do in order to create a system which actually protects students experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity, but expanding affordable housing is a good place to start.
Studying on the streets: students struggle with homelessness in the Bay Area
By Rachel Alcazar, Elaine Jiang | Scot Scoop | November 7th, 2024