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Room 201 changed him

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Content Room 102 Changed Him
By: Tiffany Mankarios
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ANNENBERG SCHOOL FOR COMMUNICATIONS AND
JOURNALISM
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment Of The
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(JOURNALISM (SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM))
May 2022
Copyright 2022 Tiffany Ehab Mankarios
Table of Contents
Abstract .........................................................................................................................................iii
Chapter 1: An Unlikely Student……………………….…………………………………...…...1
Chapter 2: The Numbers Prove It…………………….…………………………………………2
Chapter 3: The Barriers Are Towering……………….…………………….………..……………3
Chapter 4: The Man On The Other Line…………….………...….……….….…………………4
Chapter 5: Breaking The Cycle…………………….….…………….……...…………………...7
Chapter 6: A Broken System...…………………….……………………………………………8
Chapter 7: You Are Not Alone……………….…..……………………………………………..9
Chapter 8: Notable Legislation…………...…………………………………………………....10
Chapter 9: Looking Forward ….…………...………………………………….…………...…..11
Bibliography..……………...………….…………………………………………….……………12
Abstract
Housing insecurity: an issue on college campuses across the US, but it’s particularly problematic
in California, a state marked by inequality and a staggering housing crisis.
The rising cost of rent is a struggle for students in every part of California’s educational system,
including at public universities with multibillion-dollar endowments: in a 2017 survey conducted
by the University of California, Berkeley, about 10% of students, including 20% of post-doctoral
students, said they had experienced homelessness.
In this research you will find that this crisis hits hardest at California’s community colleges,
which enroll about 2 million students each year (which makes it the largest system of higher
education in the country). Black students, indigenous students, and LGBTQ students, especially
transgender students, were at higher risk of housing insecurity than their peers. Community
colleges offer a pathway to higher-paying, more stable careers, particularly for students who
come from families without many financial resources. But the latest statewide survey, published
in 2019, found that 19% of California community college students had experienced
homelessness in the past year, and 60% had experienced some kind of housing insecurity.
Room 102 is a narrative piece that tells the story of two unhoused students (one from Santa
Monica College (SMC), and the other from Long Beach City College (LBCC)).
Chapter 1: An Unlikely Student
John Smith was sleeping in the fetal position, as he looked up at dozens of hardened gum pieces
latched under the table, a white beam of light shone directly on his face. He squinted, shaking
himself awake. An empty red can of Chef Boyardee Ravioli lay within reach. Plastic trash bags
– for warmth, as well as to warn of intruders – lay across his body. Smith (not his real name) sat
up. Across the white-walled classroom, 20 desks sat empty. A clean whiteboard bore traces of
blue Expo marker residue. Smith looked as a blurry clock came into focus. It was 6 a.m., the
sunlight stretching over the classroom windows, after another night spent alone, hiding in Room
102 of the Liberal Arts Building at Santa Monica College (SMC).
“Hey man, wake up! You’re not supposed to be in here!” says the uniformed officer at the other
end of the beam of white light. “Are you a student here?”
“Yes, sir,” Smith answered.
Smith looked up at the man in blue, “Santa Monica Campus Police” emblazoned on his gold
badge. “You gotta come with me,” the officer says.
The first thing Smith noticed on the bearded officer was his nightstick. At that moment he
recalled the time, at 10 years old, he was beaten by another baton-wielding cop.
Smith, wearing a pair of five-day-old navy blue Walmart jeans, an SMC student welcome
campus T-shirt, ripped black Reebok sneakers with white laces, and a thick black beard, followed
the officer down the corridor. The look of fear on Smith’s face became his most noticeable
accessory.
He was escorted to a cold, silver elevator that smelled of cleaning supplies, and after the officer
looked at Smith in disgust, hit Floor 3. Smith’s heart was pounding thinking he would be arrested
as soon as the elevator doors opened. This was the longest elevator ride of his life. As he felt the
elevator jolt, a bell sound followed and the pounding in his heart intensified.
Smith’s experience that morning would change his life.
As he walked out of the elevator, his heart heavy, he was escorted by the policeman to a
windowed office where a lone woman sat at her cubicle.
The woman stood up and approached Smith. She wore a black dress, lavender-scented perfume,
and a gentle smile that glided across her face. She walked directly to Smith, opened her arms and
hugged him.
“Hi my name is Sarah, and I am going to help you,” she says.
Little did he know it at the time, but the intervention of the Campus Peer Navigator would
reverse a long slide into homelessness and unrelenting poverty for Smith, who had been
homeless for much of his life.
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Smith’s story has become increasingly common over the last 10 years.
Chapter 2: The Numbers Are There
A survey of nearly 86,000 students last fall by The Hope Center for College, Community, and
Justice found that homelessness affected 18% of respondents attending two-year colleges and
14% of those attending four-year institutions. The number who say they had experienced housing
insecurity, such as difficulty paying rent, was much higher, at 60%, among those attending
two-year schools, and 48% for those enrolled in four-year institutions.
A remarkable percentage of California college students are experiencing homelessness, while
others are not even being counted.
According to a report conducted by UCLA in October of 2020, 5% of University of California
students and 20% of California community college students are currently experiencing
homelessness.
Homelessness in California has shot up by nearly half – 48% over the last decade, according to
2020 data compiled by the U.S. Department of Education.
“These people might not be on the street at this point but they do not have a stable and regular
place to sleep,”says Sarah Fay, a SMC Campus Navigator who specializes in housing insecurity.
She is the woman who hugged Smith the morning he stepped off the elevator. “That creates
major stress that interferes with education.”
“Staying temporarily with a relative or couch surfing is also homelesness.”
Smith, a first-generation college student, was not new to being an unhoused student at SMC.
However, the challenges surrounding the 2020 Spring semester were far beyond what he would
have imagined.
“School for me was my safe space. School is a ‘gateway,’ a place I sought asylum, that place I
got social services. On top of that, I had no place to get a warm meal,” Smith says. “I can't fully
focus on classes because I'm worried that I won't have a place to complete assignments or access
to Wi-Fi at some point.”
In November 2021, Smith sat in a local Starbucks, reflecting about his life of being an unhoused
individual masked by the sound of coffee beans grinding against the rumbles of his stomach. He
appeared nervously on edge, tapping his foot on the marbled gray floor, his palms as moist as a
kitchen sponge, nervous he would be asked to leave.
He let out a strong breath.
“I know I don’t smell the best, but I canceled my gym membership so haven’t been able to
shower,” says Smith, staring at the laminated chestnut wood floor.
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Without a classroom, Wi-Fi, or access to working electricity, Smith fell behind and began to be a
target for police.
“Campus police would harass me. I would hang around the campus all the time but I wasn’t
welcome. My student ID was not enough to mask the stench of not showering for days on end
and certainly was not enough for me to be welcomed on campus. I have never had a safe place to
call home,” Smith says, holding back tears.
A typical day for Smith during the pandemic included doing schoolwork outside the SMC school
library (in order to have Wi-Fi and access to outlets), studying, and begging on empty streets for
dinner money that he would end up buying from his local dollar store.
Chapter 3: The Barriers Are Towering
When he started at SMC, Smith would typically spend his nights, alone, under the 405 freeway
near the Cloverfield exit.
It was comforting to him knowing there would be school tomorrow – a normalcy that stretched
further than the quarter-mile of tents and blue-tarp roofed structures that he and his neighbors
called home.
He was able to sit in a classroom among his peers, until the pandemic stripped that away from
him, as SMC closed and moved fully online.
The costs and challenges of community college did not push Smith into the ranks of the
homeless. He had a long history of being unhoused during a large portion of his life, starting in
2010.
On the first night he was evicted from his family apartment in South Los Angeles, then 10-year
old John was left standing in the rain, on the front two steps of a local church praying he had a
place to sleep. Smith first experienced homelessness at the age of 6, sleeping on church floors
that were both packed and unsanitary, much like the other emergency shelters.
Smith would get lice within two days of staying at any new “temporary home.” Now and then,
when his parents could afford it, the family would stay at a motel for several nights. It felt like
Christmas.
“I looked at my peers with ‘the basic necessities’ with such envy,” Smith says.
Smith and his family were constantly moving, which brought disappointment, which in turn led
him to become extremely detached. He would avoid relationships at all costs out of fear of
abandonment.
At 16 years old, Smith was still experiencing homelessness. Although this harsh reality was not
new to him, the experience as a teenager was more difficult because he no longer had his family.
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His father went to prison and his mother died of a drug overdose.. Homelessness became a
struggle that Smith couldn’t escape.
As time went on, Smith struggled with depression that led him to constantly feel unloved and
unworthy.
“I remember chanting my mantra echoing in my head, ‘If everyone I ever loved left me alone,
why should I care about me? I don’t deserve to be here, I’m just a waste of space.’”
Soon after Smith found out about his father’s incarceration, his deteriorating mental health made
him question everything about high school and if he would ever be able to attend
commencement. In October 2016, in a string of many failures, Smith became truant. He became
part of the 87% of homeless teens that dropout of high school.
Once Smith's father got out of prison, the two lived together in temporary housing. Smith’s
trauma and depression continued and his mental health steadily declined.
“I saw no purpose in enrolling back in school. I was simply overwhelmed. I was left with a
thought: What was I going to do about the following school year – would I go back to school?”
He spent what would have been his freshman year alone, left with a decision that would change
where his life would take him.
Smith realized he wasn’t alone. As he walked through campus parking, many cars had been
parked with pillows stacked up against back windows while blankets lay flat on back seats.
One of the resources Smith found was a hotline run by the California Youth Crisis Line (CYCL)
which operates 24/7 in partnership with the statewide emergency response system for youth
(ages 12-24) and families in crisis. Professionally trained staff and volunteer counselors respond
to 17,000 calls annually with crisis intervention counseling and resource referrals to service
providers in the caller’s local community. The CYCL has access to more than 5,500 free or
low-cost resources for youth and families across California.
This recourse has been available for over 34 years, and answers calls about thoughts of suicide,
depression, bullying, health and identity questions, trauma, human trafficking or any teen-related
struggle are discussed with a crisis counselor in confidence and without judgment.
Chapter 4: The Man on the Other Line
Jevon Wilkes, one of the operators on the response team also has had a history of being an
unhoused youth.
“I experienced homelessness kind of in a downtown area. I've experienced homelessness
throughout my life. I was in the foster care system from birth and having experienced
homelessness as a young person as a minor,” Wilkes says. “It was definitely something that I
4
didn't anticipate. Because I had that experience and had experienced trauma in my life, I thought
I was going to die early.”
Wilkes, much like Fay, sat in a cubicle. But unlike Fay, Wilkes' job has brought him closer to the
youth and has a larger reach to youth who experience homelessness.
On the rainy morning of November 14, 2014, Wilkes answered the phone call that made his
career. Much like any other day, his desk setup was the same. On his right hand side wall were
Scotch taped family photos of his mother, father, wife and two daughters. Right under it, a
protocol sheet, with detailed instructions of how to answer phone calls and transfer them to the
appropriate agency. On the left hand side wall, still mostly its original color of gray, had one
shelf that carried a 7/11 eight ounce coffee cup (which sat for six plus hours) and a half eaten
pink sprinkled donut that left a trail of crumbs leading all the way to his black slacks.
Around 11 a.mWilkes answered line five, a few seconds of silence followed then, he got
connected to Smith.
“California Youth Crisis Line, are you in a safe location?”
A 30-minute conversation followed.
Wilkes couldn't forget the conversation he had with Smith earlier that day.
Earlier that day his only thought was the birthday party the office was holding for one of his
co-workers later that night. After the dispatch call, Smith was the only thought he had.
When the time of the party came, the alcohol he drank earlier in the day wouldn't hold down any
more than the food the office catered from Chick-fil-A.
As Wilkes’ stepped out of his office and into the hallway, he took a deep breath as he hoped for
fresh air, but instead smelled the office that carried an odor of mold, mildew, nuts and the
lingering smell of microwavable takeout.
These are the challenges that come with helping unhoused youth. Although Wilkes deals with
these challenges every day, the work doesn't get easier.
“So I used the time where I wasn't able to, you know, find housing. I was actually in a shelter
when I was in high school, because I was experiencing homelessness on the streets. My
beginning, you know, experience of high school and my school psychiatrist decided to step in
and intervene. And it wasn't necessarily because they knew that I was experiencing homelessness
and started off because I was also in special education the majority of my life.”
Wilkes devoted his career and life to helping others who have been in similar situations to the
ones he's faced growing up. His job entails taking emergency calls from the public and
communicating with the proper authorities to dispatch the response personnel.
5
In his role, Wilkes’ duties included finding out the nature of the emergency, getting the address
from the caller, and sending the information to the relevant department.
Wilkes, an African American male himself, has made it his “responsibility” to look out for the
youth in his community especially in times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
“So we did a survey with 321 young people, which majority of them were a cisgender African
American Black young men. We saw that during the pandemic, they were in between three
locations: Car, tent and outdoors. I went out and tried to get them to go out and get tested. We
saw that, you know, a small percentage of them came up positive for COVID. As I continued to
talk to them I saw a pattern. They wanted employment opportunities and housing. They also
wanted to make sure that their physical health and their mental health was in position,” Wilkes
says.
Wilkes’ work entails collecting data with affiliate partners or different agencies that work with
young people or have connections to young people. He also meets young people through social
media. He used this as data to show that young people have been suffering significantly through
the pandemic.
“Through my work it feels like I'm carrying the world on my shoulders because a lot of people
depend on me,” Wilkes says. “I try to encourage these kids to live the best life that they possibly
could live and through surviving towards resiliency, towards the opportunity to thrive, to keep
pushing forward no matter how hard COVID has impacted them and their lives.”
COVID- 19 brought unprecedented challenges and uncertainty to Wilkes’ life, which bled into
his personal relationships. He says his family has kept him afloat and remains the constant
happiness in his life.
“Well, I have my anchor, which is my faith and, you know, I believe in God and that is one thing
that keeps me moving forward,” Wilkes says. “I try to gain the character of someone who loves
the world so greatly, which guides me in my work. Secondly, my family, being able to spend
some time, even though my daughter can be a handful cause you know, kids stay crying.”
Wilkes has learned throughout the years the power of a smile or a giggle.
“It helps me to see my 3-year-old's face and to see my youngest daughter (who is two months
old). And I try to tell myself, you know that it's not about me. When I get to work, you know,
granted, I have a lot on my plate and I have people that, to some degree, I have to give direction
and support to.”
Wilkes says his job at times could be very isolating, but, when he is able to do things for others,
it helps fill the void in his heart. In terms of self-care, two of the things that Wilkes indulges in is
food and video games. He has found that after all the heavy conversations he has with students
and youth that he's helping, those two things likely remedy some of the pain, or at least keep his
mind off of the intensity. This is what helped him with Smith’s case.
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Chapter 5: Breaking The Cycle
That first year at SMC, Smith’s life consisted of him waking up at 11:30 a.m. (by either roaches
or mice inside his apartment) and watching television. The low-income government housing was
covered in molded white paint, creaky floors and rusted faucet bathrooms that spewed out
brown, potentially contaminated water. But for the first time, Smith felt lucky.
“This was the closest I've gotten to having a home to come back to. I had a roof over my head. I
remembered I even said a prayer here for the first time. I fell to my knees and just thanked God,
or whoever is up there,” Smith says.
Smith saw the effects of his parents’ lack of education and how that led his family to live
paycheck to paycheck.
“I realized that I wanted an education and a future that wasn’t filled with the struggles my family
had battled throughout our lives. There were many nights we couldn't afford dinner and I would
just sleep, hoping the grumbling would go away in the morning. I’m tired of being a statistic and
not doing anything about it,” Smith says.
It was there at the small apartment with the mold-infested walls, where he recognized the
strength and resilience he had acquired from his unhoused life. With time, Smith learned the
importance of his voice and how it could impact future generations of young children who would
come to have similar experiences of homelessness.
And so when the woman in the black dress with the gentle smile gave Smith that big hug, with
the campus police officer looking on, Smith knew he could grab the lifeline she was offering.
Fay helped him to see the larger view of fixing the problem, introducing him to student basic
needs assistance: Calfresh, SMC “Take out Tech” (A free laptop-lending program) and academic
counseling that would help him transfer to a four-year university. Greater than anything, she
uttered the four small words of encouragement he had never heard before: “You can do this.”
Fay has dedicated over two years to SMC peer navigation as both a Youth Board Member and
the member chair for the organization. Fay’s passion for serving vulnerable college populations
comes from her lived experience of being unhoused, the foster care system, and living as
disconnected youth. During her career, Fay has answered the call of thousands of youth in need
of support and spearheaded the effort in advocating for public policies that have improved the
lives of students and helped them learn how to empower themselves.
Fay says implementing strategies for reducing the impact of homelessness within the student
body is challenging, due to the dramatic increase in the sheer number of homeless students,
especially in districts and counties where there is only one homeless liaison.
“That’s because the responsibilities of a homeless liaison are quite expansive, including working
directly with families or guardians, child welfare agencies, housing agencies, health care
providers, school site leadership, district leadership, and others to eliminate any potential
7
academic, social, emotional or health barriers for students,” a report conducted by the California
Coalition for Youth (CCY) says.
Chapter 6: A Broken System
As of March 2022, there are Federal grants that total $10 million to support the education of
students experiencing homelessness. But the program only reached 106 of 1,037 school districts
in California, the report says. Two-thirds of students experiencing homelessness in California
attend schools without that federal funding.
When the pandemic forced schools to close in March of 2020, some students had tutors and
babysitters. Others were left to cope with the challenges of distance learning. For students who
were housing insecure, this meant losing their homes, meal access, and technology.
“I didn’t know what to do, nothing and no one to turn to. This was my ‘Oh shit’ moment,” Smith
says, a tear running down his face.
Susan Fila, Director of Health and Wellbeing at Santa Monica College, says Southern California
has the most expensive housing market in the state, even before the pandemic.
“Coronavirus has only made an already extreme circumstance (homelessness) among university
students worse, with a significant percentage of financially vulnerable students who are no
longer able to pay their rent are dealing with landlord evictions,” Fila says.
The report concluded that the pandemic would come with public health challenges that include
learning disparities between students experiencing homelessness and students with stable
housing conditions.
It was also noted in the report that before the pandemic, many California universities had issues
mitigating the learning challenges of the rising student homeless population.
“The pandemic was certainly not the beginning but people were more willing to help during
COVID because these challenges were heightened. I couldn’t even go to school to feel a sense of
normalcy, they were shut down,” Smith says.
Schools were also dealing with the responsibility of arranging support services for students
experiencing homelessness. These universities had only appointed a single staff member who
was hired to “combat this issue.”
Joseph Bishop, one of the authors of the report, says he had challenges regarding “the main cause
of homelessness” because of a variety of factors, including race, education level, and poverty.
The researchers behind the study say they plan to conduct case studies testing models and
cross-sector solutions throughout the state as a follow-up to the report.
8
But, according to Joshua Williams, practitioner researcher with the Hope Center for College
Community and Justice, although there are certainly problems, the homelessness rate could
recover if certain protocols are followed.
“In California, 48% of students are affected by housing insecurity. On the other hand, 14% of
students are affected by homelessness,” Williams says. “So how housing insecurity encompasses
a broad set of challenges that prevent someone from having a safe, affordable, and consistent
place to live. For example, the 2020 world college survey measured housing insecurity using a
nine item set of questions.”
In the midst of this crisis, Long Beach City College (LBCC) launched a pilot program in
November of 2021 to designate safe, overnight parking for students living in their cars, a move
designed to offer those who are most vulnerable some semblance of emergency aid. From 10
p.m. until 7 a.m. the program supplements up to 15 students who will be able to pull into a
security monitored campus parking garage with access to Wi-Fi, electricity and restrooms. From
6 a.m to 8 a.m., they have access to campus showers.
The effort is the first step to provide immediate help to community college students who are
living in cars. According to college data, about 68 students so far have been identified. Safe
Parking L.A., an organization that will serve as a consultant for the college’s program, says that
more than 15,700 people in Los Angeles County live in their vehicles each night.
Chapter 7: You Are Not Alone
Patricia Lopez, 34, is among the LBCC students who have experienced homelessness. After
escaping from domestic violence in December 2019, she and her 12-year-old daughter spent
months living in their car or in a friend’s RV without electricity and couch-surfed at various
friends’ homes — all while continuing to work and take classes as her daughter did remote
learning.
“It was the hardest part of my life,” Lopez says. “I didn’t have the means to a shower, grocery
shop and definitely wasn’t able to cook,” she says, adding that all of her and her daughter’s
belongings remained in their car at all times. Although Lopez felt inadequate and unmotivated,
she strove to do better for her daughter.
During her summer semester of the 2020 academic year, she found herself falling into a
depression, she confided to a professor that she was struggling. The professor introduced her to
LBCC’s basic needs staff, who helped her with groceries and hygiene products and connected
her to other organizations. With the collective effort, Lopez and her daughter were able to move
into an apartment in late July.
Much like Lopez, LBCC says at least 199 students have identified themselves, via a student
emergency aid fund application, as chronically homeless, meaning they have experienced
homelessness for more than a year.
9
According to a report conducted in 2020 by Los Angeles County, 55% of students reported being
housing insecure while 13% of students reported being homeless. (This data included the effects
of the pandemic). For community college students, the situation is even more dire as many
community colleges don't provide adequate living quarters or dormitories.
According to Williams, there are several factors outside of housing security that are “looped in”
to the problem and make the cycle “so hard to break.”
Some of these factors include transportation issues, mental health issues and food insecurity. All
of these connect to one another and make day to day life for homeless students that much harder
to overcome.
Williams made it clear that California has been seeing some adjustments in legislation allowing
for the necessary changes to be made.
Chapter 8: Notable Legislation
The federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act was passed in 1987 and was most
recently reauthorized in 2015.
The legislation requires every public school to count the number of students who are living on
the street, in shelters, in motels, in cars, doubled up with other families or moving between
friends’ and relatives’ homes. It also mandates that every school district, county office of
education and charter school hire a local liaison who must ensure that homeless youth are
identified and have education services coordinated for them to increase their chances of
succeeding academically.
This 2015 law requires school districts, county offices of education and charter schools to
administer an annual housing questionnaire and report the results every year to the California
Department of Education. While many schools have distributed housing questionnaires in the
past, their use was not required statewide prior to AB 27.
The state law also establishes three technical assistance centers statewide that will create and
facilitate training materials to help outline the needs of homeless youth and their families, plus
assist school districts, county offices of education and charter schools in ensuring that all
homeless students are identified. AB 27 also comes with a one-time funding grant of $1.5
million for the three technical assistance centers.
“Everybody is kind of vying for resources. In my opinion, the push comes down to institutions,
really prioritizing basic needs. This should be the highest priority because there are so many little
crucial things that impact retention,” Williams says. Much like students, each institution kind of
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has its own institutional barriers. It's truly a matter of kind of clearing that red tape and trying to
figure out how to prioritize things in a better way.”
Williams says that much like Smith’s story, it certainly is going to take a lot of people to band
together.
After the night Smith spent in Room 102, Fay guided him into her office. The placard on her
five-foot desk covered in towers of papers read: “Safe Place For Youth (SPFY) housing
specialist.” He asked her why he was in her office and she proceeded to tell him that she would
provide him with “housing support.” She kept her promise and by December of 2020, Smith had
a real bed to sleep on.
“I couldn’t imagine after going to class dirty, hungry, unfocused and tired because I haven't slept
all night, would lead me to fall asleep in that classroom," Smith says. "But that room changed my
life. Sarah helped me find a place to live, she was the first person in my whole life who didn’t
abandon or give up on me.”
Chapter 9: Looking Forward
Smith and Fay have now been friends for over two years, as she has helped him not only find
housing but a future he could depend on.
“I would like to tell people that if they’re reading this and they work with young people
experiencing homelessness, your work matters,” Smith says. “Show empathy and try your best to
provide a safe space for students experiencing being unhoused. It’s of value to help people have
their basic needs met. If someone can simply ask ‘are you okay’ that just might break their cycle
of homelessness.”
Smith is inspired by his own endeavors and wishes to pursue a social work major at a four-year
university in fall 2022. He is applying to California State University Northridge, Long Beach and
Fullerton.
“Room 102,” Smith says, “was my saving grace.”
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“Bill Text.” Bill Text - AB-27 Homeless children and youths and unaccompanied youths:
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scue-plan%E2%80%AFfunds-support-students-experiencing-homelessness.
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https://nche.ed.gov/legislation/mckinney-vento/.
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“Survey on Food & Housing Insecurity - Laccd.edu.” Accessed March 4, 2022.
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract Housing insecurity: is an issue on college campuses across the US, particularly being problematic in California, a state noticeably marked by inequality and a staggering housing crisis.
The rising cost of rent is a struggle for students in every part of California’s educational system, including at public universities with multibillion-dollar endowments: in a 2017 survey conducted by the University of California, Berkeley, about 10% of students, including 20% of post-doctoral students, said they had experienced homelessness.
In this research, you will find that this crisis hits hardest at California’s community colleges, which enroll about 2 million students each year (which makes it the largest system of higher education in the country). Black students, indigenous students, and LGBTQ students, especially transgender students, were at higher risk of housing insecurity than their peers. Community colleges offer a pathway to higher-paying, more stable careers, particularly for students who come from families without many financial resources. But the latest statewide survey, published in 2019, found that 19% of California community college students had experienced homelessness in the past year, and 60% had experienced some kind of housing insecurity.
Room 102 is a narrative piece that tells the story of two unhoused students (one from Santa Monica College (SMC), and the other from Long Beach City College (LBCC)).

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Asset Metadata

Creator Mankarios, Tiffany (author)

Core Title Room 201 changed him

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Journalism (Specialized Journalism)

Degree Conferral Date 2022-05

Publication Date 04/18/2022

Defense Date 04/18/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Community Colleges,homeless student,OAI-PMH Harvest,Southern California,unhoused student

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Aguilar, Amara (committee chair), Lena, Afary (committee member), Pecot-Hobert, Lisa (committee member)

Creator Email mankario@usc.edu,tiffanyemankarios@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC111004382

Unique identifier UC111004382

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Mankarios, Tiffany

Type texts

Source 20220418-usctheses-batch-928 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu