An NYC group wants to keep homeless college students from dropping out so they can achieve 'a gateway to the middle class'

• Homelessness among college students is on the rise. And it causes many to drop out of school.
• A New York City non-profit is piloting a program to pay for students' housing so they can complete their degrees.

Osemenga Celey-Okogun moved to New York from Nigeria three years ago to study biology at Medgar Evers College, staying with a friend on Staten Island and commuting to Brooklyn for classes.

When her friend told her that she needed to find other living arrangements, however, it looked like Celey-Okogun was about to become homeless. She decided to drop out of school.

"I felt like I couldn't do anything," Celery-Okogun told The New York Times' Stefano Chen. "I was swamped trying to find housing."

But then she applied for a pilot program providing free housing to college students facing housing insecurity. As the Times reported, Celery-Okogun is now living in an apartment building in Long Island City in Queens, thanks to the Neighborhood Coalition for Shelter (NCS), a non-profit housing group committed to helping students experiencing housing precarity until they complete their degrees.

Sixteen students in total will soon reside in the building, and the organization has an agreement with the owner to allow as many as 36, or 25% of their capacity. NCS hopes to expand to that number and beyond, Nancy Riedl, chief development officer at NCS, told Insider.

The NCS Scholars program is, at the moment, funded in large part by Trinity Church Wall Street, as well as other private donors, such as the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation. The church group will also work with the Borough of Manhattan Community College to house 40 students in Harlem for three years, the Times reported.

The NCS Scholars program offers year-round housing and access to support staff for the unhoused students it assists, all of whom attend City University of New York colleges. Half of CUNY students come from households earning less than $30,000 a year, the city comptroller reported last year.

"For generations, CUNY has been a gateway to the middle class for thousands of New Yorkers," Ann L. Shalof, Chief Executive Officer of Neighborhood Coalition for Shelter, told Insider. "Sadly, many students will never complete their degrees, not because they lack motivation but because they do not have access to stable housing."

Many college students are struggling with homelessness and financial precarity in general, especially in expensive housing markets like New York City where rent has spiked over the last few years amid rising inflation. In Santa Cruz, California, for example, affordable housing is so scarce that some University of California students sleep in cars or classrooms, Insider's Alcynna Lloyd reported in October.

According to one 2019 reported from The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, almost three in five college students reported experiencing housing insecurity the previous year. 18% of two-year college students and 14% of four-year students reported experiencing homelessness at some point, the researchers found. Homeless students reported lower GPAs and higher dropout rates, according to a report by the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools.

But the pull to stay in college for these students is still strong. College graduates still earn more than workers with no university degree, research shows. That's despite the declining appeal of going to college as enrollments are down and an ongoing student debt crisis presents its own threat to the financial stability of many.

CUNY schools in particular often represent an opportunity for students to become economically mobile, if they can make it through. CUNY graduates working in New York State earned a combined $57 billion annually in 2019, $28.6 billion more than students would have earned without a college degree, the state comptroller reported. That's $67,000 on average for those graduates.

College NET, a higher education technology company, published a social mobility index for schools in 2022, putting CUNY colleges in six of the top 20 spots nationally. The index takes factors into account like graduation rates, average debt, and median salaries after graduating.

"Students pursuing an education despite the challenges associated with homelessness are resilient and driven," Shalof said. With this relatively small, short-term investment, the NCS Scholars pilot can help them obtain the credential that can lift them—and future generations of their families—out of poverty."