Document Tag: Washington

Homelessness and Housing Insecurity Among Community College Students: A Longitudinal Evaluation of a Housing Choice Voucher Program (2024)

Housing insecurity and homelessness among American community college students are widespread
problems that reduce the odds of college attainment and undermine students’ health and well-being.
In 2014 Tacoma Community College and the Tacoma Housing Authority launched the College Housing
Assistance Program (CHAP) to address this challenge by offering housing choice vouchers to local community college students experiencing or at serious risk of experiencing homelessness. If students could
successfully navigate the application process and local housing market, the vouchers offered a short-term
subsidy to reduce their rent and hopefully promote degree completion. Over the next several years, CHAP
received national and regional awards and became a model for affordable college housing programs. This
evaluation examines its effects on students before the housing authority ended the program in 2022.

Supporting Students Experiencing Homelessness Pilot Program (2023)

Basic needs insecurity is a critical barrier to college students’ access1 and success, undermining persistence and completion rates for postsecondary students.2 In Washington, college students face significant challenges in meeting their housing and other basic needs while completing their credentials. Gaps in covering critical costs such as housing and food are pervasive among students in both two-year and four-year institutions. Students of color and students who experience marginalization based on their identities and circumstances — such as former foster youth, LGBTQI+ students, and students with dependents — are disproportionately impacted.3 To address this need, the Washington state Legislature enacted the Supporting Students Experiencing Homelessness (SSEH) pilot program with 2SSB 5800 (2019). The Legislature expanded the pilot program twice — first by passing SHB 1166 (2021) and again through a proviso in the 2022 supplemental budget. The Legislature made the SSEH pilot permanent through the passage of ESSB 5702 (2023). SSEH provides grants for colleges to build systems to identify and support students facing homelessness and students who aged out of the foster care system. The Washington Student Achievement Council (WSAC) and the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) administered the four-year SSEH pilot program, which consisted of 33 programs across six public baccalaureate institutions (PBIs) and 27 in the community and technical college system (CTCs).

Connecting Students to Basic Needs Hubs During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Evaluation of a Cross-Sectoral Partnership (2023)

Reducing basic needs insecurity among community college students is an equity imperative for improving college attainment, particularly given the challenges the pandemic introduced. One popular approach is co-locating campus support services to help students access support (beyond financial aid), including public benefits and emergency aid. Some institutions operate their own basic needs hubs, while others engage outside providers. This study evaluates a campus-based cross-sectoral approach at two community colleges in King County, Washington. Together, the United Way of King County and area colleges and universities operate “Benefits Hubs” for students, offering support from peer navigators and helping them access financial resources and information. However, many students experiencing basic needs insecurity do not use hubs—a problem shared by many other student support services. Is it possible to increase students’ use of hubs through low-cost outreach? Does that outreach also improve students’ academic outcomes? Evaluators examined these questions during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when students’ needs for support were especially high, and staff were particularly constrained. The colleges collectively identified a group of approximately 3,000 low-income students who might be eligible for public benefits and thus find the Benefits Hubs’ support useful. Those students were divided at random into two groups. Beginning in fall 2020, staff sent the first group emails encouraging them to use hubs. The second group did not receive that outreach but still had access to hubs. A comparison of the two groups following that outreach revealed whether sending those emails—a strategy widely known as “nudging”—those students improved their use of hubs and/or their odds of academic success in terms of grades and retention. The results are mixed and largely inconclusive. On the one hand, outreach modestly increased students’ use of Benefits Hubs. It also reached students in several target demographic groups—older students and those from marginalized communities who are at heightened risk of basic needs insecurity. This suggests that informational barriers contribute to basic needs insecurity and may be partially overcome with inexpensive outreach strategies. However, the benefits of outreach dissipated over time, potentially because the targeted students shared information with their peers who did not receive the emails, and then those students also used hubs. Even with the additional outreach efforts, most targeted students did not use hubs and academic improvements were not evidenced. As community colleges continue to recover from the pandemic and support students to graduation, providing basic needs supports to help students afford college may help. There are several reasons why this evaluation might understate the benefits, including analytic limitations and how the pandemic affected the program. Recent legislation and philanthropy are funding many basic needs hubs, making it especially important to engage in ongoing assessment to develop strategies for strengthening their use and ensuring maximum equitable impact.

Cross-Sectoral Benefits Hubs: An Innovative Approach to Supporting College Students’ Basic Needs

The pandemic is laying bare one of the most difficult challenges facing higher education: many of today’s undergraduates are pursuing degrees without sufficient resources. With average net prices (after all grant aid) approaching $15,000 a year for public community colleges and more than $19,000 a year for public four-year institutions, even students from middle-class families are hard-pressed to make ends meet.2 This net price of attending college is a leading reason why food and housing insecurity was widespread before the pandemic, and is now likely growing.3 Faced with tight budgets, states and institutions are seeking innovative solutions to help students obtain food and housing supports. Comprehensive supports that integrate access to public benefits, emergency aid, and navigational help are co-located on the campus where students attend classes. These supports are a particularly promising approach that has been advanced for more than a decade. Models including the Working Students Success Network, Single Stop, the Benefits Access for College Completion, and Advocacy and Resource Centers, like the one at Amarillo College, all offer examples. However, each of these draws primarily on the resources of institutions—mainly community colleges—where resources are increasingly scarce. The Benefits Hubs operated by the United Way of King County (UWKC) in Seattle’s community and technical colleges (as well as one public university) offer an alternate model. Over the last academic year, we explored the Benefits Hub approach, which is an innovative cross-sectoral partnership between communitybased organizations and higher education institutions. We find the model promising, and this report explains its key elements. We are also in the midst of a rigorous summative evaluation funded by Arnold Ventures to estimate the program’s impacts on students’ education, health, and well-being.