Students Experiencing Homelessness
About the Project
How many K-12 students are experiencing homelessness in California today?
Over 269,000. That’s enough young people to fill Dodger Stadium nearly five times with a crowd capacity of over 50,000 people. And they are disproportionately students of color.
Our initial report, State of Crisis: Dismantling Student Homelessness in California, engaged 150 stakeholders from across the state to develop a clear picture of the underlying challenges facing students experiencing homelessness and patterns and geographic needs across the state, as well as identifying policy implications for serving these children.
Understanding District Educational Patterns for CA Students Experiencing Homelessness builds upon this initial analysis of student homelessness statewide to examine district-level data for 10 districts across the state.
In the next phase of this project, our team is partnering with CA school districts and counties in Monterey, Long Beach, and Fresno to document promising models for identifying housing insecure youth, cross-sector partnerships and early intervention strategies. Our goal is to provide guidance for policymakers, administrators, educators and homeless liaisons on effective strategies for identifying vulnerable students, targeting interventions, tracking their progress and measuring success locally and statewide.
Publications
State of Crisis: Dismantling Student Homelessness in CA
We interviewed 150 stakeholders from across the state to develop a clear picture of the underlying challenges facing students experiencing homelessness, and patterns and geographic needs across the state.
This policy brief builds upon our 2020 analysis of student homelessness statewide to examine district-level data for 10 districts across the state.
Interactive County Map of CA Students Experiencing Homelessness
This interactive map on student homelessness in K-12 schools in California shines a light on the staggering number of young people impacted by housing instability across all 58 counties during the 2018-2019 and 2017-2018 academic years. Over 269,000 students are homeless in California, number that will likely increase as a result of job instability and unemployment related to the virus and is higher than any other state in the country. COVID-19 has the potential to exacerbate pre-existing inequities apparent by race and income.
The map captures county profiles, with data disaggregated by race and ethnicity. Patterns in state data show the relationship between student homelessness and key school climate and academic readiness indicators including: suspension rates, chronic absenteeism rates, graduation rates and students who graduate UC/CSU eligible.
