Oscar Godinez-Avila heads into his room to grab some library books before class. He has some Pokémon study music playing in the background, a big Colorado flag hanging on the wall, and a lot of clothes piling up in his laundry basket.
“It’s a bit of a disaster,” the 25-year-old student at Colorado State University said. “I’m trying my best to get rid of things to keep it more open.”
He’s a fifth-year senior studying interdisciplinary liberal arts and history. He lives in a tiny, older apartment building in Fort Collins, two blocks west of the university’s stadium. His bedroom has all of the college essentials, but one thing is missing – a bed.
“I use a rollout mat,” he said as he took out his sheets and pillows and put them on the floor. “After moving so much, so often, I learned it's just impractical to have a big bed…my friends are usually flabbergasted when they come and see I don't have a bed.”
Godinez-Avila has struggled to find housing ever since he couldn’t afford the dorms during his first year of college. For the last couple years, he’d go around asking friends if they had a place he could sleep.
"They were kind enough to let me be on their couch while I figured out something more permanent,” he said. “Unfortunately, that usually just meant I needed to find another couch to move on, and not be too much of a burden to them."
This is the sleeping situation Godinez-Avila has always known. He grew up in Fort Morgan, on the eastern plains, but moved around northern Colorado for most of his life since his dad worked a variety of jobs. His parents couldn’t afford a place with more than one bedroom, so he would sleep with his three sisters on the living room floor.
Godinez-Avila said the longest he ever stayed in one place was one and a half years.
Despite growing up in poverty, Godinez-Avila loved to learn. After reading articles about anthropology and philosophy after high school, he decided he wanted to go to college. He even got a small scholarship to attend CSU.
But his college experience was quite different from that of many other CSU students he knew. He would spend mornings using his friends’ bathrooms or the sinks on campus to clean up. He would skip breakfast, because he had no place to store his food. He was always working or doing homework.
Godinez-Avila felt isolated, like he was the only one that didn't have money to make ends meet. He dropped out for a year before deciding to come back.
“It felt like everybody here had money, everybody here had a heritage and a legacy to build off of, and I was just left really confused and judged and exploited,” he said.
Get top headlines and KUNC reporting directly to your mailbox each week when you subscribe to In The NoCo.
"Home" is a car or couch
Nearly half of college students who responded to the Hope Center’s 2020 RealCollege Survey said they struggle with paying utilities or rent. Most of those respondents come from community colleges. Many are also managing medical, grocery and transportation bills as well. Thousands of college students succumb to these challenges every semester.
KUNC News talked to other college students for this project, all with their own stories to tell. One student had slept in a CVS bathroom once before class. Another got by working over 20 hours at Panda Express on top of completing classwork. A group of three students crammed into a studio apartment to be able to afford rent. One student lived out of his car.
“There is a substantial number of students affected, it's not negligible,” said Sara Goldrick-Rab, the former director of Temple University’s Hope Center, which administers the RealCollege Survey. “Food insecurity, housing insecurity, and homelessness are all issues that are persistent and not going away.”
Additionally, 1 in 7 students who responded to the RealCollege Survey said they were homeless at some point during the year. More than a third said they lacked the food they needed. These problems only get worse at two-year colleges, as well as for those who identify as part of the BIPOC or LGBTQIA+ communities.
Goldrick-Rab believes these numbers fail to represent the full scale of student homelessness.
“Those (who took the survey) are the survivors, so to speak. Those are the ones who were able to have enough financial strength to stay in college, despite the fact that everything was pushing them out,” she said. “We couldn't get to the former students. We couldn't get to the dropouts.”
Universities in Colorado do not have much data on these students, showing an incomplete picture of housing insecurity among students. A recent CSU survey had a very low response rate. The University of Northern Colorado only has numbers in the teens. The University of Colorado Boulder doesn’t count students at all.
Speed bumps slow down education
Statistics can tell us how many active college students face housing challenges. But the numbers don’t account for the young people who want to pursue degrees but get delayed—or never make it—due to mental health issues or medical conditions. Some do not even have access to internet or a car to get to school.
“It's a great reward to see these students come through and totally, like, crush it in the college world because they were given some resources,” said PJ Travin, the assistant director of the Gateway to College program at Front Range Community College. “But (some people are) not realizing how those little speed bumps can completely derail a student's education as well.”
Gateway to College helps underserved youth who are at risk of dropping out of high school get their diplomas and earn college credits. Two-thirds of the Gateway to College students move on to a two- or four-year college. But other students feel a college education is not for them. Some choose to pursue a job right after high school because the ability to earn an income seems more appealing than taking out a large college loan.
“I can sit in my seat and be like, ‘Well, student loans aren't terrible because it can help you get degrees, and that it can help you earn money.’ And I can discuss that path,” Travin said. “But the reality is, if you don't complete—and if you don't have the other supports in place to complete—those degrees, then that financial piece is an extremely scary, real factor.”
Aspen Crowe can relate to this. Crowe uses they/them pronouns. The 20-year-old has always wanted to go to college. But Crowe was born with several medical issues, and like many other young adults, has struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts. Of the money they do have, they use it to pay their medical fees and rent in Boulder.
Most of Crowe’s days are spent waking up early and heading to the bus stop to get to appointments with specialists in Aurora and Lone Tree. Last month, a friend gave them a ride to a medical appointment in Windsor.
“The bus here would have taken three hours. It would have been a trip down to Denver, taking the 'north,' which is a Bustang—so I can’t even afford it—and then taking another bus, and then a 15 minute walk. That wasn’t feasible,” they said.
Travin said the reality for many of these prospective students is that there’s just too much to balance between making ends meet and completing assignments.
“(They say) ‘Okay, I have 20 hours of class a week, I need to work 45 hours a week to support myself and others, and school costs this much.’ Even if they get scholarships…the math just doesn’t work on those things,” he said.
Crowe moved to Denver from South Dakota when they were 18, after Crowe's parents said they would no longer pay Crowe's medical bills or accept their identity as a nonbinary individual. Crowe then hopped between shelters until they found TGTHR, formerly known as Attention Homes, in Boulder.
With stable housing at TGTHR— where they've been for a year and a half—Crowe could focus on other aspects of their life and health.
“I got all my mental health and my medical stuff under control,” they said. “After that, I felt confident and comfortable that I will do good in school.”
Crowe starts classes at Front Range Community College on Feb. 20. They want to get their medical assistant certificate – something they’ve dreamed of since they were young – and work at the local children’s hospital.
“I know that I can be an inspiration to other people, especially kids,” Crowe said. “(I want) to show them that even though life may not be OK right now, eventually, you'll get to a spot where it will be OK.”
Thriving, not just surviving
Oscar Godinez-Avila, the student from CSU, agreed that housing makes all the difference. LuMin is an organization next to CSU that provides subsidized, apartment-style living to students who did not inherit generational wealth. Godinez-Avila has been living in one of the units since last spring.
“It was an insane weight lifted off my shoulders,” he said. “I feel like (last semester was) the first semester I really started to thrive, because for once that obstacle wasn't present…I didn't have the anxiety of feeling like nothing I was doing was ever good enough.”
The LuMin housing initiative is one of the first supports like it in the state. CSU, CU Boulder and the University of Northern Colorado all offer forms of emergency financial aid and food pantries for students who need help. But most colleges still do not have good housing resources for students in need. CSU refers students to external housing organizations. CU Boulder and UNC offer temporary emergency housing to students, but only if they get evicted from their current residence.
But even these resources may not make their way to the students who most need them. The RealCollege Survey found half of students surveyed who struggle to meet their basic needs don’t apply for these housing resources because they do not know they exist.
Godinez-Avila said he would probably be living in his car if he did not hear about LuMin's housing options.
After securing his housing, though, Godinez-Avila was able to start connecting with mentors for the first time. Instead of working a minimum wage job, he got an internship at a local museum since he could now afford his rent.
Through that internship, he fell in love with local history and has since applied to pursue a master’s degree in history at CSU. He dreams of one day getting a doctoral degree.
But more than professional growth or a newfound availability for extracurriculars, Godinez-Avila enjoys having a space of his own for once. He can finally focus on his homework and getting a good night’s sleep without people barging in. He’s decorated, too, putting up art of historical monuments around Colorado, like the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings, and nurturing a few house plants.
“Just being able to decorate this is so motivating, it makes me feel a lot more dignified,” he said. “It makes me feel like I can love the world on another level and love myself on a level that I think I've been deprived of for a lot of my life.”
Life still isn’t easy for Godinez-Avila, though. He continues to rely on the campus food pantry, and he’s unsure what his scholarship funding will look like next year. But he hopes others can find the support they need to make a degree more possible, just like he has.
“Housing insecurity and food insecurity should not in any way shape or form, be any sort of norm for any college student,” he said. “It's insane to be trying to navigate modern life without these resources.”
