Supporting Safe Parking

Unhoused students often experience higher levels of stress, such as being overwhelmed or anxious, associated with the experience of houselessness and the fear of being criminalized.

Unhoused students are more likely to have trauma histories, which often informs their sense of resiliency and motivation for their education.

This hierarchy relates to the constant need for unhoused students to make basic needs choices while managing competing priorities with their education; being unhoused makes school hard, especially when compounded with other basic needs insecurities and constraints on time.

Unhoused students may not be open to disclosing their living situation and experience marked differences in their situational identity: they often describe not feeling like other college students, but also being distinct from other unhoused people as well.

Unhoused college students often are very driven, and ascribe their motivation to viewing college as a pathway out of poverty, houselessness, or incarceration and thereby view dropping out of college as the same as falling into insecurity.

Unhoused college students often describe on-campus resources as being fragmented, lacking coordination across departments, and requiring disclosure of their situation without the guarantee of actual assistance.