A new shocking study has found that 1 in every 5 of the 230,000 in Los Angeles Community College District are homeless and another two-thirds cannot afford food costs. It is a chilling statistic that offers an insight into economic strata in the country and the marginal economic conditions for so many people.
Roughly half of the students reported that they have been struggling with high housing costs. Some 19% said they were recently homeless and 8% reported being thrown out of their homes. Another 4% said that they were recently evicted and 6% had stayed in an abandoned building, car or other non-housing location. Some 65% can’t afford balanced meals, and 60% are unable to buy more when their food runs out, the study said.
Students raised in foster care represent a significant percentage of this homeless class. The L.A. County Board of Supervisors this month designated homeless college students among the beneficiaries of the tax fund, which is expected to produce $3.55 billion over 10 years.
Last year, the California State University system found in a preliminary study that 1 in every 10 of its 460,000 students was homeless.
So you deep state shill Mr Turley, why don’t you talk about causes such as the Federal Reserve? NAFTA? The bull sht global warming taxes? Building codes and other ways the government artificially causes our cost of living to go up?
This did not happen in a vacuum. Of all states the Peoples Republic of California has trampled the free market more than any other state and this is the root cause of the influential problems.
Hell why doesn’t CA just raise the minimum wage to $50 an hour and solve the problem? 🙂 LOL
Reblogged this on HISTÓRIA da POLÍTICA.
Living homeless and short on food to get an education should be commended and helped!
There is nothing stopping you from helping those people.
Table 3 on Page 12 of the linked survey is enlightening. Here are the questions, and if a student answered “yes” to even one of them, that student was counted as “food insecure.”
*The food that I bought just didn’t last and I didn’t have enough money to get more.
*I couldn’t afford to eat balanced meals.
*Did you ever cut the size of your meals or skip meals because there wasn’t enough money for food?
*3 or more days: Did you ever cut the size of your meals or skip meals because there wasn’t enough money for food?
*Did you ever eat less than you felt you should because there wasn’t enough money for food?
*Were you ever hungry but didn’t eat because there wasn’t enough money for food?
I don’t know about any of you, but I was pretty fat, dumb and happy in college, but would also have been tagged as “food insecure.” (I was rarely, however, “alcohol insecure.”) The table of questions on housing is similarly loose, and I was also “housing insecure.”
The headline misrepresents the survey, which showed that 20% of the students answered that they were “recently homeless”. How do they define recently? What duration of being out of your own housing qualifies as being homeless? Does couch surfing with friends for a couple of weeks count?
When I was in college 50 years ago, I was out of housing for a 2-week period and had to camp out in a tent.
I never thought of myself as homeless, in fact I don’t think the term was even in use back then. I was “between places”. Being homeless is different….it’s settling into a pattern where you are not actively seeking to get back into your own housing.
Most of us were in similar positions. When first married I lived in a slum and tried to avoid even the bus because of a short supply of money. I didn’t even have a cheap TV set and didn’t go to the equivalant of Starbucks. I always worried about money to pay the bills because I was in debt despite working 70 hours a week for the early part of my life and work . Half of my friends were thrown out of their famiy’s homes and went to live with friends and while at the university most had to bunk with others. A good number had jobs starting at age 14. I don’t remember anyone complaining like the spineless Liberals of today.
Allan – the food at college was so bad that I lived on Jello. I had very strong finger nails. 😉 Besides, isn’t part of the college experience to couch surf and starve?
Paul I came from a family that was well off, but they believed you make it on your own which was the biggest gift. Friends coming from poor families lived better than my wife and I. I never had big desires and neither did my wife so we sort of fell into things which makes it twice as good.
I have strong fingernails and a strong back. Together they created a stronger mind.
Forgive my cynicism, but I have lived in California, and my experience tells me we need more information. There is another, likely more dubious explanation that isn’t being addressed, I guarantee it.
You recall how Mitch Snyder of the Community for Creative Nonviolence pulled a number out of his a** for the census of homeless in 1984, a number that our worthless media recycled for years? Snyder later admitted that the number (3 million) was a lie. The Urban Institute in 1990 completed a study which concluded that there were 600,000 homeless in the United States, or 0.25% of the population. The Census Bureau could only locate 230,000 when it attempted a count that year (a count Snyder worked to disrupt). The notion that 20% of the community college students in Los Angeles are vagrants is almost certainly a bogus invention of an advocacy group which will never be held accountable.
does anyone know the age of emancipation of foster children in California?
Struggling to survive requires an incredible amount of mental energy. Those who suffer that fate are likely to have little mental energy available for formal education.
The incredibly lazy folks who suck off their inheritance teat could have the mental energy to learn, but instead choose to demean those who struggle to survive.
I wonder if your heirs read your post? I guess they will have to go homeless to receive your assets.
“It is a chilling statistic that offers an insight into economic strata in the country and the marginal economic conditions for so many people.”
Too funny. Only insight is how screwed up California is.
Thank you, please drive around.
This is a survey presented in a blog based upon a news article written by a reporter who likely doesn’t understand what junk most survey’s are especially those without controls. One gets the answers they want from this type of cr-p.
I’ll ask a question. “Do you always have the money you need?” I guarantee many on this blog will answer no and then can be listed under “money insecurity”. Go to Starbucks while one is drinking what is essentially a $7 cup of coffee and one will get the same answer.
The cure to “money insecurity” is a job. Trump is creating jobs and higher salaries. Obama said scr-w the working class and to the h-ll with jobs.
I searched and searched Salon and Atlantic and couldn’t find it.
http://wihopelab.com/publications/hungry-and-homeless-in-college-report.pdf
I would like to see how the questions were asked, something sounds a little hinky to me.
The solution to the problem is have Madona, Leo DiCaprio, Ashly Judd and by all means George Clooney and the rest of the Hollywood libs taxed 80% of thier income. They are constantly going all over the world adopting kids why not help at home? Doesn’t charity begin at home?
Regardless of how much this study exaggerates the percentages, there must be a significant percent of students in financial stress. This points to another missing part of the US philosophy on education, that it be reserved for those who have money and those that don’t, regardless of ability, go without. We, in this country have become so polarized and dysfunctional that it is shameful, when you compare us to other more societally and democratically advanced nations or even with the 60’s and 70’s when a young person could go to school just to sort things out. The more educated a society is the better decisions it will make, to the left or the right. Add this to the distancing between the rich and the poor with the erosion of the middle class and the future does not look too intelligent. Then there is the survival of the fittest argument that points to how better and stronger we will be as a nation as when those that had to obtain a degree in this manner will be the stronger for it. Then there is the fact that student debt is now greater than all other credit card debt. It costs an arm and a leg to live in the land of the free and be number one.
Something doesn’t add up here.
Another example of a study occurring and politics meddling in the results:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/06/29/seattle-commissions-new-minimum-wage-study-after-dismissing-first-results.html
Can these students get food stamps? Could the schools provide a space for them to sleep? High Schools have gyms with basketball courts and showers. School administers should learn where the evening meal for the homeless is offered. Be creative as you seek help for these people – any part-time work on weekends or evenings. All best.
I have to admit I am a bit skeptical of this study, which according to the L.A. Times was commissioned by the district’s board of trustees. Here is an excerpt from the Times…
If the school has a financial incentive or a political advantage it draws into question the objectivity of the tests, which can be skewed as to results by posing questions in a steering manner. For example, is the definition posed to students of “homelessness” to include sharing an apartment with another person but not being on the lease or having mail addressed there to them? Is that the metric? Or, is not having a “balanced” meal each day only asked in a manner such as “Do you eat snacks or well balanced, square meals each time you eat?” The result if answered in typical college student manner “I eat junk food every day” could then be drawn into not having enough proper food to consume for the purposes of study results.”
With the information given, I find it greatly difficult to accept a statistic that 20% of all students in a broad range of demographics within a higher education field are homeless in the same sense that most members of the public would define, such as living on the streets. But, creating such a narrative makes for good cause to ask politicians to cough up in this case billions of dollars to help fund public works options with little capital outlay by a school district and a windfall in profit sharing.
I believe it is incumbent upon the purse holders to scrutinize this study before handing out the money so easily.
> and are considering making campus land available in exchange for profit-sharing,
Sounds like a money grab and a ripoff of taxpayers to give public land to be used for “profit sharing”.
That said, while the homelessness itself is terrible, it is reasonable and even good that LAs homeless find the LACCD a resource to use, and hence I would expect LACCD homeless rates to be much higher than say UC’s homeless rates.
It’s also shocking what UC’s homeless rates are.
Gee, I wonder why California has so many homeless people??? Could it be that the Democrats are more interested in staying in office, than protecting its citizens.
I bet the number is much higher, closer to 4 or 5 million. The cost to the State???
Venezuela—coming soon to a city near you!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
California has so many homeless people because of the weather. Sunshine and little rain. Once here they don’t want to leave.
Yes and the rents are very high due to high demand.
I’m not sure rental fees are the problem for homeless in CA.
Squeeky, only distantly related, but I’m sure you’ll love this. Someone with whom I’m close drove busses for a local school for children (age from a few month to 5 years) of migrant agricultural workers. Well over 90% of the employees are Central or S. American, many either illegal or related to illegals. Last year after the election, co-workers promised that El Chapo would take out Trump, and make their problems go away.
I am not in the least bit surprised. I actually feel sorry for the illegals in one sense, because most of them just want a job, and a chance to make a living. But their very presence here drives down wages, and takes jobs that should be forced onto lazy Americans who are sucking off the Welfare Teat.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter