Post-secondary Student Homelessness/Housing Research Network

Project Description

The current project summary (video)

Introduction

73% of Canada’s 2,180,000 post-secondary (PS) students are youth 17-24 years old; the remainder range from 25 to well into their 80's!  About 5% of youth post-secondary students face various forms of homelessness and housing insecurity each year. These range from being literally unsheltered to chronic couch surfing, which seem to be more understandable to most people's understandings of the issue. However, more discrete under-recognized forms of housing insecurity, such as remaining in abusive homes or relationships, or suffering substandard and unhealthy housing, are also experiences we now recognize as widespread and catastrophic for students.

So there are social, structural, psychological, and emotional qualities to PSSH. PSSH is conditioned by many socioeconomic and demographic variables and disproportionately impacts Canada’s Indigenous and international students. Current work since 2023 is revealing how it impacts the transitions of recent immigrants to Canada. In fact, homelessness and housing insecurity can be thought as more than lack of shleter. It neess to be more broadly understood as losses of affiliation with loved ones, ancestors, homeplaces and communities, and one’s self, a position well-stated by Métis scholar and historian, Jesse Thistle’s typology in The Indigenous Definition of Homelessness in Canada (COH 2017). https://www.homelesshub.ca/IndigenousHomelessness ). 

Based on our earlier surveys between 2016-2021, and a review of literature, we can state that PSSH disrupts practical outcomes like finding a job and exacerbates or prolongs homelessness a student might be trying to leave. Very often one form of less harmful housing precarity such as occasional couch surfing or what we call, hidden homelessness, can become infrequent experiences of literal homelessness, and students become forced to make dangerous housing decisions, like entering the sex trade, getting into or remaining in abusive situations to stay housed while in school.

The easy narrative attached to the story of post-secondary students - having multiple roommates in a shared condo or house, is not the situation we are describing here. A degree of hardship attached to education seems normal but it is often dangerous, and should not be that way to begin with. PSSH research has historically been weak, but our research is at the crest of a wave of new work looking at the issue more clearly.

Some Canadian research looks at barriers to primary and secondary school education in low-income families and on Indigenous groups, and international students, yet the data that administrations and students possess to make concrete responses to Post-secondary experiences is weaker. Since our work began in 2016, and this study formally took offin 2021, there has been a rise in interest in PSSH and other precarities facing post-secondary students.

An Interactive Data Set of Best Practices

Emerging Canadian responses like on-campus emergency safe houses offer temporary shelter, and other supports such as off site rental supplements are short-term and have their place -- the range of responses by post-secondary administrations has not been tallied and systematically evaluated, nor have the insights of students: there is no centralized database about all these responses to help coordinate efforts to stop PSSH. As pointed out by some administrators at the University of Alberta and in the Nova Scotia Community College’s MEHP (Metro Emergency Housing Program) partners in this research, openly engaging students to identify best practices in a systematic way can help address this problem because students often disguise PSSH as food insecurity, social anxiety, sleep issues and ‘problems at home.’ Students and administrators feel that institutions need to support better so this project provides an interactive tally of existing and planned programs and invites people to help us build this resource.

Demographics

A current national survey by UTILE, an innovative and successful student housing non-profit in QC, included key demographic questions we designed for our earlier study in their most recent national survey- they received 18,000 responses from sites across Canada ( https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/604e1456a8cd2bab84c72bc8/620bdc5d984c6b176f6aec44_Rapport_PHARE2021.pdflink ) We now have an accurate understanding of the prevalence and other demographic aspects of PSSH that tend to confirm the numbers we derived in our earlier surveys; notably that close to 5% of PS students are in housing duress and/or homelessness; that’s close to 110,000 students who need help with housing and other supports in order to finish their academic goals and dreams.

Student Engagement

The key participants in this project are students, primarily youth, who have experienced housing insecurity and/or homelessness as defined by the COH, Thistle, and others. We are engaging with youth students with lived experience from the general post-secondary population, but also with groups that are over-represented in PSSH; Indigenous students and support communities, LGBTQ2S+  associations and students on campuses, international students and other often-marginalized groups- our research respects the values of equity, diversity, and inclusion, and is using the ideas and experiences of real students to shape sensible housing and housing supports. Many students, whether youths or older, facing PSSH, are resilient — there is a lot on the line.  As educators, students, and administrators ourselves, we know how important education is to the participants in our research.  

As stated above, our work showed that in extreme cases, students will do dangerous things to finish school, like sleeping in unsafe spaces, accepting tremendously substandard rental spaces for exorbitant rents, or engaging in unregulated sex work.  Around 2/3 of students who were not experiencing PSSH in our first survey, said they would leave school if homelessness took hold. About 1/4 said they didn’t realize that they had been homeless in the past until they read the formal COH definitions above. 100% of administrators and support workers we addressed between 2016 and 2019, stated that PSSH was a frustrating and dangerous problem and that supports needed to be developed to assist with student housing precarity.

Community, Student Engagement, and Impact

Various phases of the project allowed student researchers in our network to engage broadly with other students from sites around the country. The RAS rotated in and out of different roles to broaden skills-capacity building. As a practical project, the greatest reward has been seeing new supports and housing for vulnerable students put in place, such as the construction of new residences and housing supports for students in some provinces. Other impacts are equally satisfying: governments at all levels have invited us to speak on the post-secondary sector, including the House of Commons, and various provincial offices. One of our greatest impacts has been to stir the pot of debate and problem solving on this issue through our many appearances in the press, radio and TV. Speaking at several conferences, networking and collaborating with other sites, researchers, students and administrative bodies along the way, as we conclude the project this fall, we are confident that the Post-secondary sector has the knowledge it needs to address PSSH. For those using this site, the various pages offer research findings, some links to other researchers and a couple of innovative data bases based on environmental and literature reviews.

Students, Stigma and the Future

We hope to amplify the influence of students in the design of housing and supports at their schools and others, and the clarification of how administrations can help them by inviting students and many others to our webinar and symposiums in the fall of 2024. The discussion produced by this research and building of support prototypes, even in theory, will reduce stigma through public normalization of the PSSH narrative, increase help-seeking behaviours, and ease some stressors faced by students in precarious housing, leading to better education outcomes. We hope student led working groups will continue to press the housing support issue with administrators and policy makers.