A new ‘solution’ to student homelessness: A parking lot where students can sleep safely in their cars

解决学生无家可归问题的新“解决方案”：一个学生可以安全地睡在车里的停车场

LONG BEACH, Calif. — When Edgar Rosales Jr. uses the word “home,” the second-year college student with a linebacker’s build isn’t referring to the house he plans to buy after becoming a nurse or getting a job in public health. Rather, the Long Beach City College student is talking about the parking lot he slept in every night for more than a year. With Oprah-esque enthusiasm, Rosales calls the other students who use LBCC’s Safe Parking Program his “roommates” or “neighbors.”

加利福尼亚州长滩——当Edgar Rosales Jr.使用“家”这个词时，这位拥有线卫身材的大二学生并不是指他成为护士或在公共卫生部门工作后计划购买的房子。相反，这位长滩城市学院的学生正在谈论他一年多来每晚睡的停车场。罗萨莱斯以奥普拉式的热情，称其他使用LBCC安全停车计划的学生为“室友”或“邻居”。

Between 8 and 10:30 p.m., those neighbors drive onto the lot, where staff park during the day. Nearby showers open at 6 a.m. Sleeping in a car may not sound like a step up, but for Rosales — who dropped out of a Compton high school more than 20 years ago to become a truck driver — being handed a key fob to a bathroom stocked with toilet paper and hand soap was life-altering. He kept the plastic tab on his key ring, even though he was supposed to place it in a drop box each morning, because the sight of it brought comfort; the sense of it between his fingers, hard and slick, felt like peace.

晚上8点到10点30分，这些邻居开车到停车场，工作人员白天在那里停车。附近的淋浴在早上6点开放。睡在车里听起来可能不是一种进步，但对于20多年前从康普顿高中辍学成为卡车司机的罗萨莱斯来说，被递给一个装满卫生纸和洗手液的浴室的钥匙扣改变了他的生活。他保留了钥匙圈上的塑料标签，尽管他应该每天早上把它放在一个滴水箱里，因为看到它会带来安慰；他手指间的感觉，又硬又滑，感觉很平静。

When Rosales and his son’s mother called it off again in the fall of 2024, just after he’d finished a GED program and enrolled at LBCC, he stayed with his brother for a week or so. But he didn’t want to be a burden. So one day after work at the trucking company — he’d gone part-time since enrolling, though he’d still regularly clock 40 hours a week — he circled the block in his beat-up sedan and parked on the side of the road, near some RVs and an encampment. The scariest part of sleeping in his car was the noises, Rosales said: “I heard a dog barking or I heard somebody running around or you see cop lights going down the street. You see people looking in your car.” He couldn’t sleep, let alone focus. Without the ability to bathe regularly, he began to avoid people to spare them the smell. The car became his sanctuary, but also, a prison. As he put it, “It starts messing with your mental health.”

2024年秋天，罗萨莱斯和他儿子的母亲在他完成普通教育发展课程并进入伦敦商学院后再次取消了这项计划，他和哥哥呆了一个星期左右。但他不想成为负担。所以有一天，在卡车运输公司下班后——他自注册以来一直做兼职，尽管他仍然每周工作40个小时——他开着破旧的轿车绕着街区转了一圈，停在路边，靠近一些房车和一个营地。罗萨莱斯说，睡在车里最可怕的部分是噪音：“我听到狗叫，或者听到有人跑来跑去，或者你看到警察灯在街上亮着。你看到有人在看你的车。”他睡不着，更不用说集中注意力了。由于无法定期洗澡，他开始避开人们，以免他们闻到臭味。汽车成了他的避难所，但也成了监狱。正如他所说，“它开始扰乱你的心理健康。”

First, Rosales dropped a class. A few weeks later, he told his LBCC peer navigator he couldn’t do it anymore and needed her help to withdraw. Instead, she got Rosales signed up for the college’s Safe Parking Program, and everything flipped on its head. With the LBCC lot’s outlets and WiFi, the back seat of his car morphed into a study carrel. Campus security was there to watch over him, not threaten him like the police had, telling him to move along or issuing a citation that cost him a day’s pay. For the first time in a month, Rosales said, “I could just sleep with my eyes closed the whole night.”

首先，罗萨莱斯退学了。几周后，他告诉他的LBCC同行导航员，他再也做不到了，需要她的帮助才能退出。相反，她让罗萨莱斯报名参加了学院的安全停车计划，一切都颠倒了过来。有了LBCC停车场的插座和WiFi，他的汽车后座变成了学习车。校园保安在那里监视他，而不是像警察那样威胁他，告诉他继续前进，或者发出一张要花他一天工资的传票。罗萨莱斯说，这是一个月来第一次，“我可以整晚闭着眼睛睡觉。”

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Forty-eight percent of college students experience housing insecurity, meaning “challenges that prevent them from having a safe, affordable, and consistent place to live,” suggests the most recent Student Basic Needs Survey Report from the Hope Center at Temple University. That number rises to 60 percent for Black students, 67 percent for students who are parenting and 72 percent for former foster youth. The problem also tends to be worse for veterans and those who identify as LGBTQ+ or have been labeled undocumented, said Sara Abelson, an assistant professor and the Hope Center’s senior director of education and training. Fourteen percent of the nearly 75,000 students surveyed experienced homelessness, the most severe form of housing insecurity. Other analyses produce similar estimates.

天普大学希望中心的最新学生基本需求调查报告显示，48%的大学生经历了住房不安全，这意味着“阻碍他们拥有安全、负担得起和稳定的居住地的挑战”。这个数字上升到黑人学生的60%，育儿学生的67%，前寄养青年的72%。助理教授兼希望中心教育和培训高级主任Sara Abelson说，对于退伍军人和那些被认定为LGBTQ+或被贴上无证标签的人来说，这个问题也往往更严重。在接受调查的近75,000名学生中，有14%的人经历过无家可归，这是住房不安全的最严重形式。其他分析产生了类似的估计。

Of course, rates differ by institution. The Hope Center found that housing insecurity at two-year schools, like LBCC, was about 10 points higher than at their four-year counterparts. A similar gap divided institutions that serve high proportions of students classified as racial and ethnic minorities from those that don’t. Geography also matters: It’s much easier to find a rental unit in Wilmington, North Carolina, for example, than in Portland, Oregon. And yet, the problem is a national one, said Jillian Sitjar, director of higher education for the nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection, affecting both rural and urban areas and “not just a California thing.” That’s partly because of a national housing supply shortage and the fact that eligibility rules for affordable housing programs often exclude students; and it’s partly because the cost of college has risen nationwide as both government investment in higher education and the purchasing power of financial aid have fallen over the decades. The second Trump administration’s threatened and actual changes to Pell Grants, the largest federal student aid program, haven’t helped, nor have its cuts to the social safety net generally and erosion of laws meant to ensure equitable access to housing.

当然，不同机构的费率存在差异。希望中心发现，像LBCC这样的两年制学院，其住房不安全问题比四年制学院高出约10个百分点。类似差距也存在于以高比例少数族裔学生为主的机构与非此类机构之间。地理位置同样重要：例如，在北卡罗来纳州威尔明顿租房远比在俄勒冈州波特兰容易。然而，非营利组织SchoolHouse Connection高等教育项目主管吉莉安·西贾尔指出，这一问题具有全国性特征，影响着农村和城市地区，"并非加州独有"这在一定程度上源于全国性住房供应短缺，以及经济适用房项目资格审核规则往往将学生排除在外；同时也因为近几十年来，随着政府对高等教育的投资减少和助学金购买力下降，全国大学学费持续上涨。特朗普政府第二任期对佩尔奖学金（联邦最大学生资助项目）的威胁性及实质性调整非但无益，更进一步削弱了社会保障网的普遍覆盖，加剧了住房公平准入相关法律的侵蚀。

For years, colleges have primarily referred homeless students to shelters, nonprofits and other external organizations, but “there’s kind of a shift that’s happening,” Sitjar said: “Institutions are starting to look internally, being like, ‘OK, we need to do more.’” LBCC’s Safe Parking Program is one of the most visible of a new crop of programs addressing student housing insecurity by giving students unorthodox places to sleep: cars, hotels, napping pods, homes of alumni and even an assisted living facility. What sets these stopgap efforts apart from longer-term strategies — such as initiatives to reduce rents, build housing (including out of shipping containers), rapidly rehouse students, cover housing gaps (like summer and holidays) and provide students with more financial aid — is that they’re designed to be flawed. College administrators know full well that Band-Aid programs are insufficient, that they’re catching blood rather than addressing the source of the bleeding. And yet, while long-term projects are underway, what’s woefully inadequate can be quite a bit better than nothing.

多年来，高校主要将无家可归的学生转介至收容所、非营利组织及其他外部机构，但“一种转变正在发生”，西贾尔（Sitjar）表示：“机构开始内部审视，意识到‘我们必须采取更多行动’。”洛杉矶社区学院（LBCC）的“安全停车计划”是众多新兴项目中最引人注目的举措之一，这些项目通过提供非常规住宿场所来解决学生住房不安全问题，包括汽车、酒店、午睡舱、校友住宅甚至辅助生活设施。这些临时措施与长期策略的区别在于—— 诸如降低租金、建造住房（包括集装箱改建）、迅速安置学生、填补住房缺口（如暑期和假期）以及提供更多助学金等措施——它们的设计本身存在缺陷。大学管理者清楚地意识到，这些权宜之计远远不够，只能止血而非解决出血源头。然而，在长期项目推进期间，即便措施远远不足，也总好过毫无作为。

An oversize sink sure was for Mike Muñoz. Decades before earning his doctorate and becoming the president of LBCC, Muñoz was a community college student who worked in a mall as the assistant manager of a portrait studio. After coming out as gay, he couldn’t go home, and then the family lost their house to foreclosure so “there wasn’t a home to go back to,” he said. Many nights, he’d crash on friends’ couches, but in the week leading up to payday, he couldn’t afford the gas to get there from work. Feeling hopeless, Muñoz would find a parking spot near the mall and spend the night in his car, dealing with the exact same stressors Rosales would endure years later. In the morning, he’d take a sponge bath in the oversize sink that the studio used to develop film. His No. 1 concern, after survival, he says, was keeping anyone from finding out about his homelessness, especially on campus.

迈克·穆尼奥斯（Mike Muñoz）曾用过一个超大的水槽。在获得博士学位并成为LBCC校长之前，穆尼奥斯曾是社区学院的学生，在一家购物中心担任肖像摄影工作室的助理经理。出柜后，他无家可归，随后家人因房屋被银行收回，“他已无家可归”。许多夜晚，他只能睡在朋友的沙发上，但在发薪日前一周，他连从工作地点回家的汽油钱都付不起。感到绝望时，穆尼奥斯会找到商场附近的停车位，整夜睡在车里，承受着与罗萨莱斯多年后相同的压力。清晨，他会在工作室冲洗底片的大水槽里用海绵擦身。他说，除了生存之外，他最担心的就是不让任何人发现自己的无家可归，尤其是在校园里。

President Muñoz — who is warm like Rosales yet more self-contained, often listening so intently as to become motionless — said the Safe Parking Program is about more than providing physical safety for students who sleep in their vehicles. Muñoz wants these students to feel safe bringing their full selves to college, in a way he didn’t until transferring to a four-year school and moving into student housing. “The mental load that I was carrying, I was able to set that down,” he said, “and I was able to then really focus that energy” — on classes, on who he wanted to be. That’s Muñoz’s answer to those who say emergency housing is a distraction, ancillary to the mission of a college.

穆尼奥斯校长——他如罗萨莱斯般热情，却更显内敛，常凝神倾听至静默无声——表示安全停车计划的意义远不止为夜宿车内的学生提供人身保护。穆尼奥斯希望这些学生能毫无保留地展现自我于校园，而这种安全感正是他转入四年制大学、入住学生宿舍后才体会到的。"那些沉重的精神负担，"他说道，"得以卸下，我也因此能真正集中精力"——专注学业、专注自我塑造。这便是穆尼奥斯对"应急住宿是干扰、与大学使命无关"论调的回应。

Indeed, research suggests that asking a student to thrive in college without a reliable place to sleep is no more reasonable than asking them to ace a test without access to books or lectures. Multiple studies find that housing insecurity is associated with significantly lower grades and well-being. Lacking a stable housing arrangement has also been shown to negatively affect class attendance, full-time enrollment and the odds of getting a degree. What’s more, a 2024 survey found that housing-insecure students rely more on risky credit services like payday loans and auto-title loans. This Gordian knot of need and peril, which often also includes child care obligations and food insecurity, makes it hard to prove that emergency housing alone will improve students’ lives. But Rashida Crutchfield, a professor of social work and executive director of the Center for Equitable Higher Education at California State University, Long Beach, said, “It’s one of those ‘obviously’ moments that if you house students, they do better.”

事实上，研究表明，要求学生在没有可靠住处的情况下顺利度过大学生活，与要求他们没有书籍或讲义就能取得优异成绩一样不合理。多项研究发现，住房不稳定性与学业成绩和心理健康显著下降存在关联。缺乏稳定住房安排还被证实会对课堂出勤率、全日制注册以及学位获得率产生负面影响。此外，2024年的一项调查显示，住房不稳定的学生成为高风险信贷服务（如发薪日贷款和汽车抵押贷款）的主要依赖群体。这种需求与危机交织的困境往往还伴随着育儿责任和食物不安全问题，使得仅靠应急住房难以真正改善学生的生活状况。但加州州立大学长滩分校社会工作教授、公平高等教育中心执行主任拉希达·克拉奇菲尔德说：“这是一个‘明显’的时刻，如果你为学生提供住宿，他们会做得更好。”

Related: Housing insecurity derails foster kids’ college dreams

相关报道：住房不安全破坏了寄养孩子的大学梦想

When a pandemic-era survey revealed at least 70 LBCC students living in their cars, Muñoz asked the college’s board to support him in implementing a safe parking program. They agreed something had to be done, but issues like legal liability concerned some LBCC staff. Additional worries included the cost and that it would mean less money for longer-term solutions, the risk of sending a message that it’s OK for students to have to sleep in their cars, and “the sky is falling kind of stuff” — visions of drugs, sex, trash, urine. But Muñoz pressed, and in 2021 the school piloted a program with 13 students and a startup budget of $200,000 from pandemic relief funds. That money covered private overnight security and paid for the nonprofit Safe Parking LA to train LBCC staff and help develop an application, liability waiver and more. The school’s facilities team installed security cameras, scheduled more cleaning and figured out how best to handle the extra opening and closing of the lot’s gates.

当一项疫情时期的调查显示至少有70名LBCC学生露宿车中时，穆尼奥斯向校董会请求支持他实施安全停车计划。校方同意必须采取行动，但LBCC的部分教职员工担心法律风险。其他顾虑还包括成本问题、这将减少用于长期解决方案的资金、可能传递出"学生睡车无妨"的信号，以及"世界末日般的情况"—— 毒品、性、垃圾、尿液的幻象。但穆尼奥斯（Muñoz）坚持推进，2021年该校以13名学生为试点，从疫情救济资金中拨出20万美元启动预算。这笔资金用于私人夜间安保，资助非营利组织Safe Parking LA培训LBCC员工并协助开发应用程序、责任豁免条款等。学校设施团队安装了监控摄像头，增加了清洁频次，并制定了最优方案来应对停车场大门的额外开关操作。

Similar efforts sprang up during the pandemic but later shuttered. For example, a collaboration in Oakland between Laney College and West Side Missionary Baptist Church wound down as did the safe lot program near the University of Washington’s Seattle campus. “The funding isn’t there anymore,” explained Marguerita Lightfoot, a professor at OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. Yet still to this day, she said of sleeping in cars, “There are students who are doing that at every institution.”

疫情期间也涌现过类似的尝试，但后来都停摆了。例如，奥克兰兰尼学院与西区福音浸礼会教堂的合作项目终止了，华盛顿大学西雅图分校附近的Safe Lot计划也同样告终。俄勒冈健康与科学大学-波特兰州立大学公共卫生学院教授玛格丽塔·莱特福特解释道："资金已经不复存在了。"但即便如此，她至今仍表示，"在每所高校，都有学生露宿街头。"

Knowing that, LBCC was determined to keep the Safe Parking Program running even after the federal tap ran dry. The school moved the program from its original location to the lot Rosales would call home, which has a clear line of sight from the campus security office. One extra campus security position replaced the private company, cutting LBCC’s overall spend in half. In other words, Muñoz made it work.

知道这一点，LBCC决心即使在联邦水龙头干涸后，也要继续实施安全停车计划。学校将该项目从原来的位置搬到了罗萨莱斯称之为家的地方，那里离校园安保办公室很近。一个额外的校园安保职位取代了这家私营公司，使LBCC的总支出减少了一半。换句话说，穆尼奥斯成功了。

Other schools have swung different hammers at the same nail. Some colleges and universities with dorms maintain “in-and-out rooms,” beds set aside for short-term, emergency use, the way Roosevelt University in Chicago and Fort Lewis College in Colorado do. But Sitjar says a lot of red tape and considerable expense make in-and-out rooms uncommon. For specific student populations, some schools offer year-round housing, like West Chester University’s Promise Program for former foster youth and qualifying homeless students and a similar program at San Diego State University. But “during the summer, it’s really, really, really hard for institutions to try to keep those rooms set aside,” Sitjar said, since they otherwise generate revenue via summer camps, reunions and more, and during the academic year mean room-and-board money.

其他学校对同一个钉子挥舞着不同的锤子。一些有宿舍的学院和大学保留了“室内和室外房间”，即为短期紧急使用预留的床位，就像芝加哥的罗斯福大学和科罗拉多州的刘易斯堡学院一样。但Sitjar说，很多繁文缛节和相当大的费用使室内和室外的房间变得不常见。对于特定的学生群体，一些学校提供全年住宿，比如西切斯特大学为前寄养青年和符合条件的无家可归学生提供的承诺计划，以及圣地亚哥州立大学的类似计划。但是“在夏天，各机构真的很难把这些房间留到一边，”Sitjar说，因为他们通过夏令营、聚会等方式产生收入，而在学年里，这意味着食宿费。

And community colleges — which educate the majority of American college students — mostly don’t have dorms that allow for this option. A few have teamed up with four-year institutions to house students at a discounted rate. In New Jersey, Rider University hosts students from Mercer County Community College. Through a pilot program launched in 2019, Massachusetts reimburses four-year campuses for the cost of keeping dorm beds available for community college students experiencing homelessness. A review of the program, through which eight colleges and universities have hosted students, found that 72 percent of participants showed academic improvement and even more experienced improved mental health.

而社区学院——教育大多数美国大学生——大多没有允许这种选择的宿舍。一些学校与四年制大学合作，以折扣价为学生提供住宿。在新泽西州，莱德大学接待了默瑟县社区学院的学生。通过2019年启动的一项试点计划，马萨诸塞州向四年制大学报销了为无家可归的社区大学生提供宿舍床位的费用。八所学院和大学通过该项目接待了学生，对该项目的审查发现，72%的参与者表现出了学业上的进步，甚至更多的人的心理健康状况得到了改善。

Other types of partnerships also put roofs over students’ heads in short order. Cape Cod Community College works with a local health center to get students into hotel rooms on days the temperature falls below 32 degrees. And Norco College in Southern California is just one of dozens that contracts directly with a hotel. Religious organizations help too, such as Depaul USA in Philadelphia, which houses homeless college students in a converted convent. Around 400 miles south, in Wake County, North Carolina, HOST is a nonprofit that began with members of the NC State University community inviting students to move into their homes. And New York City’s LaGuardia Community College partners with Airbnb to house students short term, with the company reimbursing hosts.

其他类型的伙伴关系也在短时间内给学生们盖上了屋顶。科德角社区学院与当地一家健康中心合作，在气温降至32度以下的日子里让学生进入酒店房间。南加州的诺科学院只是与酒店直接签订合同的数十所学院之一。宗教组织也提供了帮助，例如费城的美国德保会，该组织将无家可归的大学生安置在一座改建的修道院中。在北卡罗来纳州威克县以南约400英里处，HOST是一个非营利组织，最初由北卡罗来纳州立大学社区的成员邀请学生搬进他们的家。纽约市拉瓜迪亚社区学院与Airbnb合作，为学生提供短期住宿，并由该公司报销房东费用。

Related: From Pony Soldier Inn to student housing: How an old hotel shows one solution to community college housing problems

相关报道：从Pony Soldier Inn到学生公寓：一家旧酒店如何为社区学院的住房问题提供一种解决方案。

A particularly unusual partnership resulted when Winona Health, a health care system in Minnesota, acquired a nursing home that had a mansion sitting on the same parcel of land. The century-old building, Watkins Manor, wasn’t ideal for assisted living, so in 2021 Winona invited students from nearby colleges to move in for a very low monthly rent plus volunteer hours. Students help senior citizens do things like troubleshoot tech, go shopping and participate in therapeutic recreation programs. “The residents love it, the students love it,” said Linda Atkinson, the administrator who oversees the program. While students don’t need to experience housing insecurity to apply, the program has provided emergency housing for those who have been kicked out of a parent’s home, experienced domestic violence and more.

明尼苏达州的医疗体系温诺纳健康组织收购了一家养老院，而该地块上还矗立着一座豪宅，这一特别的合伙关系由此形成。这座名为沃特金斯庄园的百年建筑并不适合辅助生活，因此温诺纳于2021年邀请附近高校的学生以极低的月租加志愿服务时长入住。学生们协助老年人解决技术问题、购物以及参与治疗性娱乐活动。项目负责人琳达·阿特金森表示："居民们喜欢这里，学生们也乐在其中。"虽然申请者无需面临住房困境，但该项目已为被父母赶出家门、遭遇家庭暴力等群体提供了紧急住所。

Some schools combine these solutions, inching toward more comprehensive support. At California State University, Sacramento, the CARES program maintains four beds in on-campus dorms for immediate use. It also partners with the Hampton Inn and offers rent subsidies, eviction-avoidance grants (a utility bill here, a late fee there) and move-in support grants (think security deposits), among others. Additionally, the program has helped connect students with members of local churches willing to open their homes. Understanding that some students don’t have cars, LBCC too offers much more than the Safe Parking Program. As Crutchfield put it, “Different people have lots of different needs, and we have to have a buffet of options.”

一些学校结合这些方案，逐步迈向更全面的支持。在加州州立大学萨克拉门托分校，CARES项目在校园宿舍内保留四张床位以供即时使用。该项目还与汉普顿酒店合作，提供租金补贴、避免驱逐补助（例如水电费和滞纳金）、入住支持补助（相当于押金）等。此外，该项目还协助学生与当地愿意提供住宿的教会成员对接。鉴于部分学生没有汽车，长滩社区学院提供的支持远不止安全停车计划。如克鲁奇菲尔德所言："不同的人需求各异，我们必须提供多样化的选择。"

At Howard Community College in Maryland, one smörgåsbord item is a place to nap. President Daria Willis doesn’t have anywhere to put a shelter for housing-insecure students, as Harvard, UCLA and the University of Southern California have done. “We are pretty much landlocked,” she explained, “I’ve got a hospital on my left side, and I’ve got neighborhoods on the right, back, and front side of the campus.” But she wanted to do something to help the exhausted students she walked by on the way to her office morning after morning. Students who worked night shifts, parented young kids or didn’t have a place to sleep at night were curled into chairs and draped over benches. In a pilot program, the school bought five chairs, known as sleeping pods, designed for rest. After Willis posted a picture on social media of herself relaxing in one, “it exploded,” she said: “Students were in them every single moment of the day,” often needing to be asked to leave when buildings closed at 11:30 p.m. So the school bought more sleeping pods. And more again.

在马里兰州的霍华德社区学院，自助餐中的一项福利是提供午睡空间。校长达莉亚·威利斯表示，该校无法像哈佛、加州大学洛杉矶分校和南加州大学那样为住房不稳定的学生成立庇护所。"我们几乎被群山环绕，"她解释道，"校园左侧是医院，右侧、后方和前方则是居民区。"但校长仍希望为那些疲惫不堪的学生做点什么——每天清晨去办公室的路上，她都会遇见这些学生：打零工的夜班工人、需要照顾幼子的家长，以及每晚无处安身的流浪者，他们蜷缩在椅子上或瘫靠在长凳上。作为试点项目，学校购买了五把被称为"睡眠舱"的椅子，专为休息而设计。威利斯在社交媒体上发布了一张自己在其中放松的照片后，“它爆炸了”，她说：“一天中的每一刻都有学生在里面”，经常需要在晚上11:30大楼关闭时被要求离开。所以学校买了更多的睡舱。还有更多。

No one, though, believes napping facilities and parking lots are really the answer.

然而，没有人相信午睡设施和停车场是真正的答案。

Rosales has leg issues and a bad back. “I’m a big guy,” he said as he folded himself into the back seat of his car in an origami-like series of steps in early September. The WiFi on the lot is spotty, one bathroom for more than a dozen people often means a line, there’s no fridge to store leftovers or microwave to reheat them, and Safe Parking Program users aren’t able to sleep in or get to bed early. Last semester, when he took a class that didn’t get out until 10 p.m., Rosales had to move as fast as his busted knees would carry him to make the cutoff at 10:30. And he was still homeless. He’d go to a restaurant, spending dollars he couldn’t spare and eating too much just “to feel like a normal person,” Rosales said. He’d say hello to everybody and strike up a conversation with his server, to try to “be normal for a minute.”

罗萨莱斯的腿有问题，背部也不好。“我是个大块头，”9月初，他一边说，一边像折纸一样把自己折叠到汽车后座上。停车场的WiFi参差不齐，一间可容纳十几人的浴室通常意味着要排队，没有冰箱来存放剩菜或微波炉来加热剩菜，安全停车计划的用户无法入睡或早睡。上学期，当他上了一节直到晚上10点才出来的课时，罗萨莱斯不得不以膝盖受伤的速度移动，才能在10:30到达截止点。他仍然无家可归。罗萨莱斯说，他会去餐馆，花掉多余的钱，吃得太多，只是为了“感觉自己像个正常人”。他会向每个人打招呼，并与他的服务器进行对话，试图“正常一分钟”

Yet despite its limitations, the Safe Parking Program let Rosales “breathe, relax, continue on,” he said. And the lot offered a chance to build community. He began encouraging new arrivals to connect: “Trust me, we’ll help you,” Rosales would say. And they do often require help like that. Even when campus resources exist, two-thirds of students in need lack awareness about available supports, the Hope Center researchers concluded. Stigma is part of the problem. As Rosales put it, “We’re scared that we’re going to get judged or someone’s going to give us pity or give us a look … like, ‘Oh, there goes the homeless one.’” He didn’t even tell his family about his homelessness. In fact, Rosales’ peer navigator was the first to know — and he only had one of those to turn to because of LBCC’s surveys and targeted outreach.

然而，尽管存在局限性，安全停车计划让罗萨莱斯“呼吸、放松、继续”，他说。这个地块提供了一个建立社区的机会。他开始鼓励新来的人联系：“相信我，我们会帮助你的，”罗萨莱斯会说。他们确实经常需要这样的帮助。希望中心的研究人员得出结论，即使有校园资源，三分之二有需要的学生也缺乏对可用支持的认识。污名是问题的一部分。正如罗萨莱斯所说，“我们害怕我们会被评判，或者有人会同情我们或看我们一眼……就像，‘哦，无家可归的人来了。’”他甚至没有告诉家人他的无家可归。事实上，Rosales的同行导航员是第一个知道这一点的人——由于LBCC的调查和有针对性的外展，他只能求助其中一个。

Recently, Rosales organized a free breakfast to connect his “roommates and neighbors” with campus resources and each other. He felt terrible that he still couldn’t do much for the son he’d barely seen since moving out, especially after being laid off by the trucking company on Christmas Eve. But gathering participants in the Safe Parking Program, helping them — now he could add value to someone. And he felt valued by LBCC, having been given comprehensive support and case management meant to find an on-ramp to stable housing, as well as money for car repairs. (Each year, between $23,000 and $115,000 from the LBCC Foundation — which swelled after a $30 million gift from MacKenzie Scott, the philanthropist formerly married to Jeff Bezos — goes to students for vehicle registration, insurance, repairs and daytime parking permits.) Rosales felt like he mattered at LBCC, even after bringing his whole self to campus, just as Muñoz had hoped.

最近，罗萨莱斯组织了一次免费早餐，将他的“室友和邻居”与校园资源和彼此联系起来。他感到很糟糕，因为他仍然无法为搬出去后几乎没见过的儿子做太多事情，尤其是在圣诞节前夕被卡车公司解雇之后。但是，召集安全停车计划的参与者，帮助他们——现在他可以为某人增加价值。他觉得LBCC很重视他，因为他得到了全面的支持和案件管理，旨在找到通往稳定住房的入口，以及汽车维修的资金。（每年，LBCC基金会都会向学生发放23000至115000美元的车辆登记、保险、维修和日间停车许可证，该基金会在与杰夫·贝佐斯（Jeff Bezos）结婚的慈善家麦肯齐·斯科特（MacKenzie Scott）捐赠3000万美元后迅速壮大。）罗萨莱斯觉得自己在LBCC很重要，即使像穆尼奥斯所希望的那样，他把自己全部带到了校园。

Related: Overdue tuition and fees — as little as $41 — derail hundreds of thousands of California community college students

相关报道：逾期的学费和杂费——低至41美元——让数十万加州社区学院脱轨。

At some point in the nation’s history, homelessness on college campuses was nonexistent, a rounding error when it did occur, because students had to have wealth behind them to access higher education. As efforts to democratize admissions and attendance (like the GI Bill) have borne fruit, “more of those who are facing these issues are getting to institutions,” said Abelson, the Hope Center’s senior director of education and training, combining with housing and funding shortages to create need that “has largely gone under the radar and unrecognized.” Efforts to equalize opportunity have been insufficient, and yet, they’ve made it possible for someone like Muñoz to graduate and then rise through the ranks. They’ve made it possible for his days of rationing gas and sink-bathing to open an institution’s eyes to the need for a net to catch students who are slipping off its ivory tower, and for Muñoz to push to create one, even if it must be stitched together from imperfect materials.

在美国历史上的某个时刻，大学校园里的无家可归现象并不存在，这是一个四舍五入的错误，因为学生必须拥有财富才能接受高等教育。随着招生和出勤民主化的努力（如《退伍军人权利法案》）取得成果，“更多面临这些问题的人正在进入机构，”希望中心教育和培训高级主任Abelson说，再加上住房和资金短缺，创造了“在很大程度上被忽视和未被认识”的需求。机会均等的努力还不够，但他们让穆尼奥斯这样的人有可能毕业，然后升职。他们让穆尼奥斯在配给天然气和洗水槽的日子里，意识到需要一张网来捕捉从象牙塔上溜走的学生，并推动他创造一张网，即使它必须用不完美的材料缝合在一起。

But the reality is that the majority of schools have massive holes in their nets, or to return to Crutchfield’s metaphor, they don’t offer any of these emergency housing dishes, let alone the whole spread. For the most part, colleges and universities still just create a list of resources and refer students out, suggesting they try their luck with local shelters and Craigslist. It’s inadequate. “Our shelter systems are overtaxed,” Crutchfield said, “there’s just not enough capacity.” And even when there is, “students don’t see shelter systems as for them,” she said. In some ways, they’re right: Shelter rules, including the need to queue up and turn lights off when there’s homework still to be done, often clash with students’ needs.

但现实情况是，大多数学校的蚊帐都有很大的洞，或者回到克拉奇菲尔德的比喻，他们不提供任何这些紧急住房菜肴，更不用说整个传播了。在大多数情况下，学院和大学仍然只是创建一个资源列表并推荐学生，建议他们在当地的庇护所和Craigslist上碰碰运气。这是不够的。克拉奇菲尔德说：“我们的庇护所系统负担过重，只是容量不够。”即使有，“学生也看不到适合他们的庇护所系统。”。在某些方面，他们是对的：庇护所规则，包括在还有作业要做的时候需要排队和关灯，往往与学生的需求相冲突。

“If I fall down and I’m bleeding, definitely get me medical attention, get me a Band-Aid,” Crutchfield said. “But if the road is broken, and that’s why people keep falling down, you have to deal with the road.” So yes to safe parking, she said, but also, “What are we going to do next?”

克拉奇菲尔德说：“如果我摔倒了，流血了，一定要给我看病，给我拿创可贴。”。“但如果道路坏了，这就是人们不断摔倒的原因，你就必须处理好道路。”所以，她说，安全停车是肯定的，但“我们接下来要做什么？”

In addition to building housing, participating in rapid rehousing models and advocating for financial aid that covers the true cost of college, some schools have hired homeless liaisons, staff members dedicated to assisting students experiencing homelessness. According to SchoolHouse Connection, California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland and Tennessee require schools to establish these roles. Maine encourages doing so, and California, Minnesota and Washington even set aside funds that can be used to pay for them. The impact appears to be significant. In Washington, 22 out of 25 community colleges surveyed said they provide some sort of emergency housing. Sitjar said, “For institutions and states that have these individuals, that have these roles, we’re then seeing those colleges make the really unique solutions of addressing housing.”

除了建造住房、参与快速安置模式和倡导支付大学真实费用的财政援助外，一些学校还雇佣了无家可归者联络员，他们是专门帮助无家可归学生的工作人员。根据SchoolHouse Connection的数据，加利福尼亚州、佛罗里达州、伊利诺伊州、路易斯安那州、马里兰州和田纳西州要求学校建立这些角色。缅因州鼓励这样做，加利福尼亚州、明尼苏达州和华盛顿州甚至拨出资金用于支付这些费用。影响似乎很大。在华盛顿，接受调查的25所社区学院中有22所表示他们提供某种紧急住房。Sitjar说：“对于拥有这些个人、扮演这些角色的机构和州来说，我们看到这些大学为解决住房问题提供了真正独特的解决方案。”

She pointed to bipartisan federal legislation, two bills that are expected to be reintroduced this session, that would require homeless liaisons as well as force colleges to develop plans for housing during academic breaks, do a better job of identifying students struggling with homelessness and more. One of the bills would update the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program to allow full-time students to live in LIHTC housing if they’ve experienced homelessness within the last seven years. Abelson said the Hope Center and others support this reform as well as similar efforts aimed at “reducing the many barriers that students face to accessing [government] benefits.”

她指出了一项跨党派联邦立法，即两项预计将在本届会议期间重新提出的法案，该法案要求设立无家可归者联络员，并强制高校制定假期住房计划、更好地识别面临无家可归困境的学生等。其中一项法案将修订低收入住房税收抵免计划，允许在过去七年内经历过无家可归的全日制学生入住LIHTC住房。阿贝尔森表示，希望中心及其他机构支持这项改革，以及旨在"消除学生获取[政府]福利面临的诸多障碍"的类似举措。

These days, Rosales still eats his feelings sometimes, he said, but “it’s slowly getting better because I see a therapist every two weeks through the school.” When LBCC told him in September that he’d been offered housing through a rapid rehousing program called Jovenes — a two-bedroom, two-bath to be shared with three roommates — Rosales began to cry, from relief but also from fear. “I never thought I was going to get out of here,” he said of the Safe Parking Program. “This is my home, this is where I live, this is where I’ve been — holidays, weekends, a birthday.” He finds comfort in knowing that the lot is always an option, as it is for the dozens of LBCC students living on the brink who have signed up for the program just in case. But he doesn’t sleep there anymore. “I’m not going back,” Rosales said, and for the first time, he believes in his ability to make that happen. He can feel in his truck-weary bones that he’ll graduate, that he’ll get that house he’s been dreaming about: “I’m moving ahead.”

罗萨莱斯说，这些日子他偶尔仍会通过进食来排解情绪，但“情况正在慢慢好转，因为我每两周会通过学校安排接受一次心理咨询。”当洛杉矶社区学院（LBCC）9月告知他已通过名为“Jovenes”的快速安置计划获得住房——一间需与三名室友共享的两室两卫公寓时，罗萨莱斯既因解脱而哭泣，又因恐惧落泪。“我从未想过能离开这里，”他指着“安全停车计划”时说道，“这是我的家，是我生活的地方，是我度过假期、周末和生日的地方。”他因知道自己随时可以回到那片空地而感到安慰，就像其他几十名濒临困境、为防万一而登记该计划的LBCC学生一样。但他已不再睡在那里。“我不会回去的。” Rosales说，这是他第一次相信自己有能力做到这一点。他能从卡车疲惫的骨头里感觉到，他会毕业，他会得到他一直梦寐以求的房子：“我要继续前进。”

Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at preston@hechingerreport.org.

请致电212-870-8965，通过CarolineP.83的Signal或发送电子邮件至preston@hechingerreport.org联系编辑Caroline Preston。

This story about emergency housing was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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