The rental market is in crisis as price increases continue to accelerate on top of a pre-pandemic baseline that was already unsustainable. The median nationwide rent for a two-bedroom apartment recently hit a record of nearly $1,700 a month, after climbing 17.6% in the past year. In some cities, rents have risen by more than 20 percent in just a year.
Unsurprisingly, these increases are having a profound effect on financially vulnerable people — including the hundreds of thousands of college students who were facing precarious housing situations long before rents shot up.
According to research from The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, as many as 48% of students experienced housing insecurity in 2021, while 14% of students reported they were homeless. At community colleges, which are more likely to serve low-income students and students of color, it’s perhaps unsurprising that students report higher rates of housing insecurity and homelessness. Because community colleges rarely have dorms or other student housing, these campuses often have fewer tools available to support their students.
The urgency to address this critical basic need has been one of the primary drivers of students’ requests for emergency financial support. Between March and November of 2021, research from Edquity found that housing is the number one issue faced by students receiving emergency financial assistance from their institutions: more than 56% of students reported they were facing housing challenges, while 21% said they were homeless. And despite the presence of eviction moratoria and the distribution of emergency rental assistance throughout the past two years, students cited housing as their most critical challenge in every single month of 2021.
Expanding the supply of affordable housing is the only true sustainable solution to this problem. But until that happens, it’s clear that higher education leaders must nevertheless take urgent action to address the student housing crisis. Acknowledging the many limitations facing institutions and their students, here are four things colleges and universities can do to better support their students struggling to cover rising housing costs:
Identify students at risk of housing insecurity early on. Working with financial aid offices, those leading on-campus student-support efforts should identify students with elevated risk factors for basic needs and housing insecurities, including those with dependents and those coming from the foster system. Over 70% of students who applied for emergency assistance through Edquity indicated multiple basic needs at a time (e.g., both housing and food insecurity), suggesting that screening for general basic needs on the front-end can in some instances serve as a proxy for potential housing insecurity. Once these students are identified, colleges should reach out to them as early as possible to ensure they have access to the resources they need to persist in their studies.
Develop closer relationships with housing authorities and community partners. Institutions of higher education and local housing authorities should work together to help provide reliable, government-subsidized housing options to homeless and near-homeless students. The Hope Center for College, Tacoma Community College in Washington, for example, has piloted its Community Housing Assistance Program with the Tacoma Housing Authority to connect students with housing vouchers.
Create basic needs resource centers. Too often, the biggest barrier to providing students with support is simply letting them know the support is available and helping them apply. More than $20 billion of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), launched in the wake of the pandemic, is still available to help renters (including college students) across the US — but that funding will never help students if they don’t know to apply for it.
Centralized resource centers on campus can help connect students to both school resources and government benefits, including programs like ERAP. As a key part of their roles on campus, student services professionals, particularly those working to ensure student basic needs are met, should focus on building awareness of these essential financial support programs programs on their campuses — and helping students apply for and take advantage of them. In Texas, Amarillo College has developed an Advocacy and Resource Center to offer students the support they need to stay enrolled. After the college launched outreach efforts specifically focused on supporting students navigating food and housing insecurity, it saw a 34% increase in student visits.
Advocate for increased housing supply and safe parking. We know that affordable housing stock is already in short supply across the country, and without intervention, this is unlikely to change. Advocacy by higher ed leaders is essential for communicating the urgency to provide more housing options for students. Consider the success of advocacy efforts in California last year, which led to the creation of the $500 million Higher Education Student Housing Grant Program, which will be split among community colleges and four-year institutions to construct new housing for students.
Short of providing a dorm room for every student, there’s little colleges and universities can do to control the price of housing. But there are a few supports they can put in place that will make life a little less stressful for their students. A college student who’s worried about making the rent or getting evicted will have trouble learning. But a college student who knows they have a place to stay, and is confident that their college will help them secure this basic need, is much more likely to stay in school, complete their degree, and chart a path to a future that could include a home of their own.
David Helene is co-founder and CEO of Edquity.