Housing assistance can help keep students in school

David Harrison

With college students back in class for the fall and elections next month, the student debt crisis is getting more attention, and for good reason: Americans’ studentloan debt has surpassed $1.5 trillion and is now second only to mortgage debt.

Community colleges are an important part of the solution. With costs far below those of four-year schools, community colleges offer many excellent academic and technical programs that prepare students for good-paying careers in the 21st-century economy. However, despite the commitment of our community colleges to keep the cost of higher education affordable for all students, there are many other financial strains that our students must deal with every day, including the growing costs of housing and food expenses.

With rents rising much faster than wages and financial assistance, many community-college students turn to their student loans to help pay for housing instead of their educational expenses. Too often they wind up dropping out of school burdened with debt, no degree and poor job prospects.

A national report issued earlier this year found that 46 percent of communitycollege students have difficulty paying for housing and 14 percent experience homelessness at some point during the year.

Most of our students juggle class time with their job schedules and many are raising children. So you can imagine that it’s especially difficult to focus on your studies when you don’t know where you’re going to sleep at night.

For far too many Ohioans, finding a career with a sustainable living wage is a major challenge. Only two out of the 10 most common jobs in Ohio now pay employees enough to afford a two-bedroom apartment. As Ohio’s economy has transformed, a post-secondary degree or credential has become essential to secure a job that pays a middle-class wage. With tuition costs that are affordable to working families and job-focused pathways that can lead directly to an in-demand career, the community college is the bridge out of poverty into economic mobility and the middle class for tens of thousands of Ohioans.

At Columbus State, we are envisioning solutions to serve the whole student, recognizing that learning can be successful only when basic living needs are met. If our students struggle with consistent shelter, they are also likely coping with food insecurity and otherwise having a hard time making ends meet. We can play an important role by making sure they take advantage of the supportive benefits available to them.

Toward that end, Columbus State is actively partnering with community organizations including the Community Shelter Board, the Mid-Ohio Foodbank, the United Way, the YMCA and Franklin County Job and Family Services as a convener of support services to help our students succeed, broadening our outlook of what it means to help students achieve their goals.

These partnerships are effective, but elected officials can help, too. There are proven solutions that can help reduce the gap between the high cost of rent and the financial instability that community-college students often experience before graduating. Increased federal investments in public-assistance programs that provide rental assistance, food assistance or other social support services would help more low-income working students finish school, get a degree and launch a career that ensures financial independence.

At the state level, an expansion of the Ohio Housing Trust Fund would invest in the state’s main source of funding for homeless services and affordable-housing production. The state also can create new models of rental assistance for young people aging out of foster care, people with disabilities and others who are struggling to make ends meet.

As we head into next year with a new governor and new General Assembly, Ohio has a great opportunity to identify new and innovative ways to tackle stubborn barriers to economic mobility for low- and middle-income families and their children. In order for our workforce to meet its full potential, state policy needs to make certain that students have access to essential programs and services, including ensuring students have safe, affordable housing.