
Up to 14% of community college students are homeless, new study says - paulpauper
http://college.usatoday.com/2017/06/30/up-to-14-of-community-college-students-are-homeless-new-study-says/
======
austenallred
This doesn't surprise me at all. We're now in a place where a non-skilled
career doesn't get you much more than minimum wage, and if you absolutely
_have_ to have a college degree to get a job, you're willing to make
sacrifices to do it. So what is someone to do?

The answer traditionally has been "take out $40-200k in student loans," but
does anyone realize how terrifying that can be for someone making minimum
wage? Imagine having to risk 4x your current salary based on the _promise_
you'll get a job, except you're learning that for a lot of people it isn't
working as advertised. It's an insane risk and/or sacrifice we require _to
just survive_.

I run a computer science academy that's free until you get a job
([https://lambdaschool.com](https://lambdaschool.com)), and I can't believe
how many people we talk to that just $1,000 of tuition would be a deal-breaker
for. I was talking to one of our best students last week and learned that she
was living on the floor of a relative and trying to use a touchscreen and some
half-working cloud editor to code because she couldn't afford any type of
computer, even the cheapest $50 version. It was really slowing her down, but
she had no other option, and didn't know what to do. (Don't worry, we shipped
her a computer.) I hadn't even thought to ask.

The crazy thing is the value of taking someone from unskilled to skilled is
enormous; we see $50,000/yr swings in annual salary _all the time_ , and they
get that for the rest of their lives. So say they work for 40 years, that's a
$2m increase in lifetime salary pre-tax. The cost of us training them to get
there is <$10k. But we frequently ask people to either go into an amount of
debt or to try to cashflow on minimum wage. It just doesn't work.

~~~
aaron-lebo
It is a broken system but community colleges are made for people like this. It
doesn't take 40k in student loans, it takes 2.5k in funds over 2 years which
you can piece together at a minimum wage job or if you really need to take out
as a loan. Then you've got an associate degree and half of a bachelor.

How expensive is community in Cali?

It does seem the system isn't made to inform people of their options.

~~~
pdeuchler
People know their options.

Let's be real... outside of trade professions like
programming/carpentry/plumbing/etc. an associates degree is barely a step up
from a GED (and sometimes worse: "Why didn't you just take the extra two years
and get your bachelors???"). It also doesn't really matter how cheap it is,
the main cost for the community college demographic is the opportunity cost.
Most don't have support structures to give them the basics while they are at
school, so they have to support themselves PLUS earn an extra 2.5k in
disposable income, and then keep up with their studies on top of all of that.
And since an associates gives you extremely limited social mobility in
comparison to a bachelors most just forgo it, often replacing school with an
extra job.

In terms of social mobility a college degree is the new high school degree,
anything less is exactly that and will not give you sufficient social mobility
especially when you're on the lower end of the spectrum to begin with. We need
to accept this and begin treating college like we did high school, making it
free and standardized for everyone. The only other option I can see is trying
to radically change social norms that have developed over the past 30-40 years
and I just don't think that's feasible outside of select industries like ours.

~~~
Retric
That would just make a masters the new collage degree.

The real problem is a huge swath of the US economy is based on reputation not
ability. Exclusivity _is the goal,_ so the more people reach benchmark X, the
further companies will move the benchmark.

~~~
pdeuchler
That's an impossible problem though, isn't it? Reputation was used as a proxy
for ability until it became an end itself, but until we can correctly
attribute some metric of ability (which sounds slightly dystopian) before
hiring people we will continue to rely upon proxies to inform our decisions.

Of course, you really don't have this problem in economies where middle class
jobs aren't scarce...

~~~
Retric
IMO, it has to do with how zero sum much of the economy is.

A factory cares about it's absolute production vs cost. However, a lawsuit is
based in part on relative skill.

------
strict9
I share something in common with the subjects of this article. Came from a
good, though not wealthy, home. Parents wanted me to get an education like
they didn't get, so I went to community college majoring in information
systems and programming.

Worked a part-time (20-30 hours) job, had an apt, but was evicted because
people I lived with partied all the time and didn't obey the rules. I didn't
have enough to get a place on my own, so I slept in my car or at the homes of
friends for almost a year, keeping the tech support call center job and going
to school.

Though I didn't get a degree, it was a good lesson of personal responsibility,
lifelong learning, and not relying on others. Ended up in software development
by starting at the bottom at a tech company (customer service) and learning on
my own time at night, clawing my way up. If my parents would have taken me
back in (if they even would have), I'm not sure I'd be where I'm at today. I
do wish I would have been able to graduate though.

This experience is sort of what leads me to view with derision tech interviews
that only focus on CS/algorithms, and ignore the more common day-to-day
challenges of software engineering, most of which I learned on the job.

------
jrs95
"How can you feed yourself on $8 an hour with a kid and pay rent?" Welfare.
When I worked for $8 an hour, my coworkers who were single parents had
Medicaid, subsidized child care, and could get basically whatever they wanted
in terms of groceries (plus they were still spending money on booze, weed, and
cigarettes), whereas I had no health insurance and less than $100 a month
after fixed expenses, not including food. I was eligible for a tiny amount of
food stamps and Medicaid after the expansion, but I opted to get a second job
instead.

~~~
s73ver
Why on earth should I be subsidizing that company, though?

I agree that making sure that person, and people like them, should have the
support needed to make sure that both them and their child are fed and housed
and generally taken care of. Why that means I should be implicitly subsidizing
the business, instead of them being obligated to pay a living wage, is beyond
me.

~~~
blfr
It's easy to flip this argument.

You're not subsidizing that company. The company is subsidizing welfare. A
person making at least some money requires less money in form of social
transfers.

In the end, is it better to subsidize that person's wages or have them become
completely unemployable? This is not a leading question. Perhaps it would be
better to just pay them to be a parent but it's not obvious to me.

~~~
s73ver
No, I disagree. The company is getting away with paying less because of
welfare. And I reject the false choice you presented. The company should be
paying a living wage, plain and simple. If they can't, then they go out of
business. One which is better run will take it's place.

~~~
blfr
And the government is getting away with providing less welfare because the
company is paying. The company probably can pay more, the large ones always
can, but then they would hire someone else. At a higher price point, a better
employee will take their place.

~~~
s73ver
No. The government is still having to provide welfare because the company is
shirking it's responsibilities.

I'm sorry, but I will not accept the argument that it is ok for a company to
have their employees on welfare. They are a for-profit entity. I should not be
subsidizing them because they choose not to pay their employees enough.

~~~
BigJono
You're taking a very narrow view of the issue. There's no arbitrary obligation
for a company to pay a "liveable wage", whatever that is.

The whole minimum wage debate in the US is a shitshow. Both sides of the
debate are equally idiotic. What matters is minimising the amount of welfare
the government has to pay to keep people out of poverty. If the minimum wage
is too low, then like you say, the government has to subsidise some companies
that can afford to pay more but aren't, because there's a surplus of labor. If
the minimum wage is too high, then people that would otherwise be employed
become unemployed, and stop generating any wealth, which results in the
government having to pay more welfare overall.

This is a complex problem that needs to be solved using large amounts of data.
Arguments like yours barely scratch the surface.

~~~
s73ver
"There's no arbitrary obligation for a company to pay a "liveable wage",
whatever that is."

And I disagree. I believe there is. At the very least, I believe that a
company should not be relying on labor subsidized by welfare.

------
LMYahooTFY
Rising costs of living are pricing people out of the system.

You can't have children, a home, a vehicle, access to education, health care,
recreation, and artistic pursuits. Pick two or three, and maybe in the future
you might be able to acquire others.

Oh and don't pick children, since you'll have to provide those to your child
as well, some of them immediately.

~~~
notadoc
> Rising costs of living are pricing people out of the system.

Officially, inflation is only 2% a year

[https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SA0L1E?output_view=p...](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SA0L1E?output_view=pct_12mths)

I find CPI to be genuinely curious basket. Where are they finding housing,
college, and health care that's only going up 2% a year? Certainly not the
west coast where 10-20% annual increases are routine.

~~~
vkou
If you're living in a hot metro area, your CoL will rise much faster then 2% a
year. Your wages will not.

However, there are a lot more people living in Nowhereville, Middle America,
where rents are not going through the roof. There aren't any jobs there, but
that's not reflected in the CoL index.

~~~
LMYahooTFY
This is actually very false...

[https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-
releases/2015/cb15-33....](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-
releases/2015/cb15-33.html)

~~~
vkou
I said hot metro area. I'm talking about NYC and San Francisco, not Fresno.

------
tsumnia
Firstly, now I feel like crap for using "living in a van down by the river" as
my opening joke for teaching Microsoft Office (When I taught Word our first
lecture was writing a letter of resignation, and then each lesson built on
doing 'freelance work' like using Excel to calculate the necessary number of
bootleg DVDs I needed to sell to not have to live in a van).

The number does not surprise me, considering there is a 1 in 7 chance a
community college student will finish [1]. This stat was one of the reasons I
altered my class to allow 3 hours of open lab time to work on homework with me
available. I had a number of non-traditional students (former military, GEDs,
single mothers). When they were not in school, they were working (or dealing
with kids). We can joke about how computer science students are night owls
working on their assignments for long hours, but that seems like an arbitrary
ceiling when you have someone that doesn't fit the "young adult that has free
time" mold. Hell, its the motivator for my PhD research, making CS work easier
to understand/complete.

Now, I will also say, this study is glossing over "Pell chasers", who only
sign up for community college to get the Pell grant and then never show up
again. My initial thick skin came from building a rapport with students only
to see them vanish as soon as that check came. It doesn't help they can do
this for 9 semesters before getting in "trouble" (no legal trouble, just no
more free money). At my school, you had to show up to class once (first day
when no one lectures) to get your money.

I will say that teaching CC was very interesting and rewarding. I've met
deadbeats, Pell chasers, former prisoners, former crack heads, and geniuses
that dropped out of HS. Just showing them you actually cared about their
learning could be the world to them - some are scamming the system, but some
truly don't want to drive a forklift for the rest of their lives.

[1] [https://www.texastribune.org/2010/02/02/most-community-
colle...](https://www.texastribune.org/2010/02/02/most-community-college-
students-never-graduate/)

Edit - Fixed some numbers I had wrong.

------
msimpson
> It found that 13-14% of students were homeless ...

Incorrect.

The study actually found that, "63 percent of parenting community college
students surveyed were food insecure and almost 14 percent were homeless..."

That 14% is therefore a percentage of a percentage of a subset of those
surveyed.

Meaning it only makes up 8.82% of "parenting" students, alone, and we are
never given what percentage that the "parenting" subset comprises of the
whole.

So the headline should really read, "Less than 8% of community college
students surveyed are homeless."

Where homeless can mean thrown out or evicted from a previous residence,
stayed in a shelter or abandon building, car, etc., or actually had no home or
idea where to stay.

While the study is worthwhile, the USA TODAY article is worthless.

~~~
in_cahoots
The article and headline are correct. You can see for yourself in Table 3 of
the linked study.

For your interpretation to be right the wording would have to be, "63% of
students are food-insecure and, of those students, 14% are homeless". As
written, there is no indication that those two percentages are related.

~~~
msimpson
> For your interpretation to be right the wording would have to be, "63% of
> students are food-insecure and, of those students, 14% are homeless".

Actually, no. For my interpretation to be absolutely correct it would need to
be:

"63 percent of parenting community college students surveyed were food
insecure and of those students almost 14 percent were homeless..."

So I see your point and I stand corrected, but I contest that the sentence in
question was written very poorly--easily leading to this misinterpretation.

The subject of it is "parenting community college students", yet the context
shifts regarding the 14% according to the table you mentioned.

There the 14% is representative of "Prevalence of Housing Insecurity,
Homelessness, and Food Security Among Survey Respondents."

Therefore, the 14% is of the whole but that sentence alludes, incorrectly, to
only the "parenting" subset.

~~~
snissn
Is this correct or not?

> Of children who have parents that are in community college, 14% are
> homeless?

~~~
msimpson
The data does not support that conclusion as the 14% represents the whole of
those surveyed, which includes both parenting and non-parenting students.

There is no breakdown of such characters on a parenting vs. non-parenting
basis.

So it could be 13% of "homeless" students are parenting vs. 1% who are non-
parenting, the complete reversal, or anything in between.

As in_cahoots noted above, check out Table 3 of the data. It alone is much
more clear on what's what.

------
yequalsx
I tach at a community college and this topic comes up periodically. The
definition used for being homeless is not what people generally think of when
they hear this term.

What is surprising to me is that I'm expected to teach a homeless person in
such a way that they pass the class and know the material. When a homeless
person fails my stats suffer. It is not reasonable that a person whose life is
in chaos be able to pass their classes and understand what has been taught.

~~~
framebit
I wish I could find this again, but I saw a similar thought somewhere out
there about teaching elementary school kids with terrible home lives in rough
areas. The sentiment was something along the lines of, "How am I supposed to
teach them fractions when they're getting raped at home."

~~~
Mz
Some people are homeless in order to get away from the people beating or
raping them at home. For such individuals, couch surfing or whatever can be a
step up over what they have been dealing with.

------
s_m_t
Sorta funny you go through upwards of 12 years of schooling and come out the
other end with zero skills to speak of... but wait, just put in another 5-6
years and maybe you'll have something to show for it ;)

~~~
nsgi
Reading and writing are skills. They might not get you a good job but that's
the purpose of training and further/higher education.

------
JauntTrooper
There are 9.8 million students enrolled in 2-year colleges in the US as of
2015.

So there are 1.4 million homeless students?

~~~
imjustsaying
I think you set this up to be knocked out of the park, so I'll oblige:

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development says 564,708 people in the
U.S. are homeless (2015)

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-homelessness-
idUSKCN0...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-homelessness-
idUSKCN0T908720151120)

------
marcoperaza
I'm skeptical. What definition of homeless are they using?

I doubt it's mostly people actually roughing it on the streets, the
colloquially understood definition of "homeless". If it's not, it's mighty
dishonest of them to use a picture of tents for the article (fake news?).

~~~
crispyambulance
According to the source study these are the things they count as "homeless",
14% have at least one of the items below...

    
    
        Any of the below items:
        – Thrown out of home: 6%
        – Evicted from home: 3%
        – Stayed in a shelter: 2%
        – Stayed in an abandoned building, auto, or other place not meant as housing: 4%
        – Did not know where you were going to sleep, even for one night: 8%
        – Didn’t have a home: 2%
    
    

I think any of those are VERY BAD as far as impact on academics is concerned.
Whether these actually constitute "homeless" is perhaps not the most important
issue.

~~~
marcoperaza
Seems like a pretty broad definition. So if your parents throw you out and you
go live with your friend or grandparents, you're homeless? I have the same
general question for all of those points.

~~~
crispyambulance
Well, if the issue is the exact definition of "homeless" you're perhaps right.

But the real problem here is that a significant number of CC students don't
have a stable home life and this WILL cause serious obstacles for the
completion of any academic program.

Very few people are actually "live-on-the-street" homeless, but housing
insecurity starts having negative impact long before they're literally on the
street.

~~~
crispyambulance
We're talking about USA Today here.

The actual report is this.. .[http://wihopelab.com/publications/Hungry-and-
Homeless-in-Col...](http://wihopelab.com/publications/Hungry-and-Homeless-in-
College-Report.pdf)

------
spike021
Depending on the study, wouldn't it make sense that there are people, already
homeless, who begin attending as students in order to gain new technical
skills that will hopefully assist them in finding a new career/job?

Rather than students attending community college and becoming homeless either
from those costs, or from having gone to a "four year" university that forced
them into debt.

~~~
tsumnia
Not many CC students finish in two years, in another comment I made, Texas
found only 1 in 7 complete within 2 years. Given that span of time and the
other factors happening in their lives, they could be homeless beforehand, or
become 'homeless" (plenty of discussion here on what that qualifies as) during
the course of their time as a student.

------
banned1
Related: garbage collectors making $100k+:

[http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/24/news/economy/trash-
workers-h...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/24/news/economy/trash-workers-high-
pay/index.html)

------
lucidguppy
How hard is it to build some but ugly Quonset huts for these people - and put
a security guard at the front of it.

People who tell others to pull themselves up by the bootstraps should try to
make sure these people at least have boots.

------
tyingq
Hmm. Wonder if some of them use it as somewhere to take a shower, etc. If they
have a way to document their low income for grants, it could be a free, albeit
high effort home base of sorts.

------
Zorlag
I am so glad not to live in the USA

------
En_gr_Student
find the root cause by looking at rising college tuition, and by transfer
rates. The root cause is not the community college. The community college is
the destination.

------
erikpukinskis
I have a friend who is homeless and in community college.

If your GPA drops below a certain point, they withdraw aid and you become
homeless. Simple as that.

------
welpwelpwelp
This article is so right! I went to Borough of Manhattan Community College,
but I'm lucky to be 28 now and be able to live at my parents, I'd be homeless
otherwise. : )

(P.S. i then got a Bachelor of Engineering from a 4 year college, interned at
Stanford University, was a GSoC fellow, got a lead iOS developer job at a
startup in NYC making ALMOST 6 figures, got kicked out of the country for not
getting selected at the H1B, worked at a startup in Paris, quit the startup in
Paris because it was boring, and spent the last 6 months burning through my
saving while living in Paris to build a startup without business model. I am
now nearly homeless, but working freelance while nearly ready to launch my
startup. Almost homeless, though!)

Did you know lipstick causes breast cancer, given that nearly 80% of people
who get breast cancer wear lipstick?

I might be crazy, my mum didn't get me tested.

