Homeless College Students

   A lot of words come to mind when you think about college students but homeless is not one of those words. Most of the college students that are homeless tend to live on their friends coaches or in their cars so they don't consider themselves homeless. The students that don't even have that are too embarrassed to identify themselves as homeless. Because of this there isn't a lot of data as too how many college students are actually homeless. The closest statistic that I found was a survey done four years ago by Minneapolis Community & Technical College. According to this survey out of 1,061 student survey respondents, 103 said that they were currently homeless and 163 students said that they could not frequently afford a meal or groceries. Since this survey was done four years ago this number is probably understated today because there has continued to be an increase in the number of homeless college students. Yet, the truth is we won't know for sure how many homeless college students are out there until we spread awareness about this issue and encourage these students to come out of hiding.

What you can do to help

   Senator Patty Murray has introduced a bill that will tremendously help out homeless college students. This bill requires post-secondary schools participating in programs under title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 to "designate a staff person as a single point of contact to assist homeless and foster care youth in accessing and completing post-secondary education" (govtrack.us). It would also require schools to include questions in their admissions application regarding the applicant’s status as a homeless or foster care youth. Another thing that this law would require is that these schools have to have a plan for how homeless youth can access housing resources during and between academic terms. The link: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s1754 goes to a website called govtrack.us where you can track any bills that have been introduced. This link will take you directly to where the bill is at and all you have to do is click on the bill. Once you have clicked on the bill you will have to login. You can use your Facebook, Google, or Twitter account for a fast, no password way to log into GovTrack. There is no need to register first, but you can if you want to. After you have logged in it will ask you for your address so that it can give you your district Senator and the option of either having the website call him/her or a number where you can directly call your district Senator. You don't have to worry about what to say because the website will also give you a script that tells you what to say. The website said that if the senator’s office asks for your name and address it means that they are taking your call seriously and it also helps your representative’s office track the sentiment of their constituents. There are a couple of things that are being done to temporarily alleviate the issue of homeless college students but if we want to do something that will make a bigger impact on this issue the best thing that we can do is get Senator Murray’s bill passed. Although this sounds like a lot of work it is actually a really easy and quick process. Another thing that you can do to help is to spread awareness of this issue be it in person or any form of social media.

   There are several reasons that there are homeless college students. Some of these students have always been homeless, sometimes it’s just because the students can’t afford housing. In other cases it has to do with the students having a falling-out with their parents. Regardless of the reason for which these students are homeless, it is obvious that they want a better life for themselves or else they wouldn't be striving towards obtaining an education. They deserve the right to acquire an education and to be secure as they do it.  If you'd like more information about this issue I have included a couple of links that will give you more information about homeless college students.
 http://blog.minneapolis.edu/blog/2010/11/04/end-hunger-homelessness/   
http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/31/pf/homeless-college-students/#
http://www.nbc33tv.com/news/help-for-homeless-college
https://newsela.com/articles/homeless-students/id/2886/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128778321
http://www.naehcy.org/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/03/homeless-college-students_1_n_802844.html#
http://www.startribune.com/local/minneapolis/112580769.html

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