A survey found that 70 students at Long Beach City College were living in their cars, so the college president created the Safe Parking Program, which allows them to stay in a campus lot. Homelessness poses a serious problem in the U.S. The National Alliance to End Homelessness reported that 771,480 people were found to be homeless in 2024, the highest number since an official count began. Typically, when you think of homelessness, you picture adults who are down on their luck, perhaps experiencing a period of unemployment.
College students aren’t the first thing that most likely comes to mind. However, they aren’t all safely tucked away in dorm rooms on campus. Many attend schools that do not have dorms, and many do not have the money to put towards on-campus housing costs. Long Beach City College (LBCC) in California sought to remedy this problem by providing a safe place for students who lived in their cars to stay.
Writing for The Hechinger Report, Gail Cornwall shared the story of Mike Muňoz, who now serves as the president of LBCC. When Muňoz was a community college student himself, he found himself facing homelessness. He had a falling out with his family after coming out as gay, meaning he could no longer stay at home. His family’s home was foreclosed on shortly after, so it wouldn’t have been helpful anyway.
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Muňoz worked as an assistant manager of a portrait studio at the local mall. He would often find a spot close to the mall where he could sleep in his car. Now, years later, he noticed the same problem at LBCC. He proposed what became the college’s Safe Parking Program, which allows students living in their cars to park in a lot used by faculty overnight.
The program has been life-changing for students like Edgar Rosales Jr., who thought he was going to have to drop out of school because of his homelessness. After attempting to sleep in his car on the side of the road, Rosales has finally been able to sleep soundly. “I could just sleep with my eyes closed the whole night,” he said.
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According to a report from the Hope Center at Temple University, 48% of students said they experienced housing insecurity in the previous year, while 14% experienced homelessness. Cornwall reported that other schools are doing what they can to tackle the issue by doing things like having rooms on hand for emergency use and partnering with hotels, churches, nonprofits, and even Airbnb.
Dan Lieberman reported on a situation similar to LBCC’s at Humboldt State University. Lieberman spoke to two students at the school, Jasmine and Nolan, who both sleep in their cars every night. Nolan said he doesn’t seek on-campus housing because he knows it would put him in debt.
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The Education Data Initiative said that the average cost of college for one year is $38,270. Of course, this differs depending on the school and the type of institution it is. That’s a lot of money, and it’s why U.S. News & World Report found that 2024 college graduates left school with an average of $30,000 in debt.
Students are going into enormous amounts of debt just to pay for college. For many, adding on housing costs on top of that is an impossibility. Many people support the idea of parking lots designated for students sleeping in cars, including TikToker and homelessness advocate Josh Henges. But is it really fixing the problem?
Of course, actually fixing the problem would mean eradicating homelessness, which isn’t really in a college’s power to do. However, the lengths schools are going to keep their students safe and allow them to get a good night’s sleep highlight just how important it is that we address homelessness as a society. People can’t be expected to continue living this way.
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Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
