Local: High school survey targets homelessness.
At several Silicon Valley high schools, a study revealed that one in six students is separated from family and faces housing insecurity
SAN JOSE >> A study released Tuesday that looked at six Silicon Valley high schools found that one in six students are either in an unstable housing situation themselves or know someone who is — with most of those couch surfing, separated from their family and living somewhere temporarily with other relatives or friends.
And that’s something advocates say puts them in grave danger of ending up on the streets.
“All it takes is an argument for them to fall off that couch,” said Sparky Harlan of the Bill Wilson Center, which conducted the survey. “Arguments are hard when it’s your own kid but when it’s someone else’s, the tolerance is much lower. They’ll say ‘You just need to leave.’ ”
The study found a high rate of couch surfing at all six high schools examined as well as two community colleges. Wealthier enclaves such as Saratoga had a lower rate while a higher rate was found in East San Jose. Overall, 17 percent of kids polled said they either knew someone who was in an unstable situation or were in one themselves. Because the survey required initials to identify the student in question, center officials said it means
that each positive answer indicates a discrete case.
“It does seem super high, but it’s something that you can easily mistake for something else,” said Ron Ricci, board president of the Bill Wilson Center.
“Count Me! Hidden in Plain Sight” was released in conjunction with “A Couch is Not a Home,” an effort to get adults to notice youth who may fall into this category. The Bill Wilson Center held a kick-off event Tuesday morning at before the county Board of Supervisors meeting.
Ricci said that years ago, he didn’t think much of his daughter’s high school friend staying there overnight until he realized that he had made her breakfast for three days in a row.
“It didn’t seem at the time to be all that unusual,” he said. “I thought, ‘Wow, she’s been sleeping here since Sunday.’ But then I forgot about it. I wish I could go back in time — if there’s a friend of your child spending consecutive days at your home, you should find the courage to ask why.”
Ricci said the study is an indicator of the “wage gap issue” in Silicon Valley.
“We’ve seen the cost of housing rise while parents are struggling to make ends meet, and that’s how regular people are ending up on couches,” he said.
The study distributed 3,442 questionnaires to kids at six high schools in different socioeconomic areas in Santa Clara County and did an electronic survey at two community colleges. Some participating schools asked that their names not be publicized. It was a brief survey, asking if students knew someone in that situation and what the general circumstances were.
Of those without stable housing in high school, 42 percent were at a relative’s house; 29 percent were staying with a friend; 10 percent were with a boyfriend or girlfriend; and 19 percent were in a situation more traditionally thought of as being homeless — in a shelter, or sleeping on the streets or in a vehicle.
Harlan said that while “nobody really believes in Silicon Valley or anywhere else that you have this many kids sleeping on couches” the results are in line with similar surveys done in other areas.
“I kept asking researchers we are working with, ‘Is this valid?’” Harlan said. “We want to make sure it holds up. And we found the results are pretty much in line with other studies — one done in Connecticut also averaged 17 percent.”
And she said that applying that percentage to the kids in Santa Clara County schools means about 13,250 kids are sleeping somewhere other than a primary stable home.
“They are shocking numbers,” said Eric Masten, director of public policy for the National Network for Youth. “But the numbers are similar to those we are seeing in counts through-out the country. Studies like this are vital to understand youth homelessness in the community." Crescencia, a 30-year-old Bill Wilson Center worker who was couch surfing be-fore entering the foster system as a teen, said her friend's parents who let her stay with them didn't think of it as anything other than an "easy fix, a long-term sleepover." "I was there for several months before I got sick at school, and when they tried to call my parents they couldn't find them," she said. That resulted in social services getting involved, which got her into the foster care system and the long-term help that she needed. "Couch surfing has a nice sound to it, it sounds like fun," said Crescencia, who declined to give a last name for privacy reasons. "But it's not. Couch surfing is home-lessness." Outside Evergreen Com-munity College on Monday, students queried shrugged and shook their heads — no-body seemed to know any-one who was couch surfing. But in the survey, 44 per-cent of students at commu-nity colleges said they did. Viviana Zaragoza, a 21-year-old student at Ev-ergreen, said the numbers seem high. "I don't know anyone here, and I only knew one person in high school who had nowhere to go," she said. "Maybe there were more — I think it's infor- mation that people don't want to give out and make known." Zaragoza said she knows that kids can go from place to place, and it seems like they are just hanging out with friends. She said she didn't know her friend —who wasn't accepted at home after coming out as gay — had no place to live until years later. Harlan said the LGBTQ population is overrepre- sented in homeless studies, and make up hundreds of the 2,500 youth counted in the "Point in Time" census conducted earlier this year.
Ben O’Hara, a transgender activist who is involved in an effort to set up an LGBTQ shelter before winter, said it’s clear that couch surfing is on the rise because it’s simply too expensive to rent a place in Silicon Valley. O’Hara has hosted transitioning youth on their own couch, taking in a high school graduate last May who recently found a room of his own.
O’Hara, 28, who was formerly homeless and a couch surfer, said it’s often a situation where someone will be allowed to come in after the residents arrive and leave before they do in the morning — often a 7 to 7 shift.
“One of the key indicators if someone is couch surfing is whether they have a key to the house,” said Harlan.
Harlan and O’Hara both said that while the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development doesn’t classify couch surfers as being homeless, they should. And it’s critical to get people help before they end up off the couch and on the streets.
“When they’re sleeping on couches, they still have the opportunity to maintain a job,” O’Hara said. “If we could provide lockers for those people, they’re on the cusp of homelessness.
“And once people spend a certain amount of time unhoused, they’re much more likely to become chronically unhoused.”