This story was originally published by EdSource.
The number of students experiencing homelessness who were enrolled in California’s TK-12 public schools has jumped over 9% for yet another year, even as overall enrollment rates continue on a downward trend.
Nearly 20,000 more homeless students were enrolled by the first Wednesday in October, known as Census Day, during the 2024-25 school year. This increase represents a 9.3% change from the previous school year, and it means the homeless student population in the state has surged 37% in the last decade.
Schools say the spike in homelessness is due both to families’ worsening financial troubles and improved identification efforts. Covid-era funding, refined data tracking, and improved training and protocol have resulted in schools being more likely to properly identify homeless students than in the past.
“It’s a combination of a perfect storm where you have all of these elements coming into play, which then speaks to that increase. The data is highlighting the need to continue these supports,” said Alejandra Chamberlain, youth services director for the Contra Costa County Office of Education.
Families are increasingly financially strained
Coachella Valley Unified School District’s homeless student enrollment tripled, a reflection of the economic struggles their families are experiencing, said Karina Vega, a district support counselor.
Increased fear of immigration enforcement is contributing to homelessness in the area. Vega shared how a student’s mother could no longer afford to pay rent after her husband was deported; another family lives in their car, and they travel each weekend across the Mexican border to spend time with a deported parent; others are constantly moving to stay off the radar of immigration officials because they fear being deported.
Many of her students live in inadequate housing. Electricity may need to be wired from one trailer to the next, water may have been shut off, or multiple families live in a small space due to financial hardship.
“We’ve seen more families than we’ve probably ever seen” experiencing homelessness, Vega said.
But she noted that students were identified at a greater rate after more school personnel learned that homelessness does not only mean someone is on the streets.
“The reality is, a lot of us that work for the school district grew up in the valley and some of these things that we see are typical, like trailer parks and inadequate housing,” Vega said.
This is where the (Riverside) county’s training on identifying all types of homelessness, an effort they have championed down to the school sites, has made a significant difference, she added.
In Mendocino County, many families who once held jobs in the waning marijuana industry are now struggling to make ends meet, said Blythe Post, coordinator of foster youth and homeless services at the Mendocino County Office of Education.
Their rural 89,000-person county is vast, but there are few affordable housing options to choose from, she said, pushing more and more of their students and families into homelessness.
But increased homelessness is only one part of the problem.
‘I anticipate we will see a huge drop’
Although the official number of homeless students continues to rise, liaisons believe the actual numbers are far higher.
Under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, every public school district, county office of education and charter school is required to hire a local liaison to ensure that homeless youth are identified and have the educational services they need to succeed academically. This federal law is also the reason that schools have counts of homeless students at all.
This law may be at risk under the Trump administration if the U.S. Department of Education is shuttered or its funding is lumped into a block grant as stated in Trump’s budget proposal.
“There’s going to be more kids to count and fewer people to count them, and then fewer services,” said Margaret Olmos, director of the National Center for Youth Law’s Compassionate Education Systems.
Liaisons say accurate counts are difficult to reach for a host of reasons. The information is self-reported, and some families are reluctant to share their housing status with school personnel. It’s rare that a school liaison only serves homeless students. Most have divided attention because they are supporting foster students and low-income students. In smaller districts, they may be the support liaison for all students.
In some ways, schools have been here before. During the 2022-23 school year, for example, the rate of homeless students enrolled in California schools rose 9% while overall student enrollment dipped.
Then, as now, families were confronting skyrocketing housing and cost-of-living expenses. The rolling impact of expiring eviction moratoriums put in place during the pandemic and the loss of housing due to disasters, including fires and floods, have further exacerbated the issue. And, similarly, liaisons attributed much of the increase to families being squeezed financially as identification practices were simultaneously improved.
But while the situation might appear familiar, liaisons say they are at a crossroads — and many do not think the odds are in their favor.
Liaisons said a 2021 state law requiring that schools include a housing questionnaire in enrollment packets has supported identification efforts. But many say what made the single, greatest difference is the one-time funding they received from the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan – Homeless Children and Youth (ARP-HCY) federal grant. The total amounted to $98.76 million for California, which was spread to 92.1% of districts over several years.
“ARP-HCY was the first time you saw school districts and counties be incentivized to find and care and count — and they did,” Olmos said.
How districts and counties applied the funds varied widely. Liaisons said it depended on their school community’s needs. Some booked short-term motel stays for students whose families were being evicted or were on homeless shelter waiting lists or provided transportation to and from school. Other liaisons hired staff to improve data tracking or who spoke students’ native languages. Still, others established after-school care, provided baby supplies for students’ younger siblings, or purchased washers and dryers to provide free laundry services for families.
Some districts opted to focus a portion of funds on improving data tracking practices.
Mendocino County’s Round Valley Unified went from one homeless student to 199 in just one school year — one of the greatest surges in the state. That increase was a reflection of more data training and tightened protocols, Post said.
“When I see those jumps in numbers … that tells me that there’s a problem with identification or communication between who’s inputting the records and who’s submitting those data reports,” Post said.
What comes next?
There are no plans by either the federal or state government to replenish the one-time federal funds at anywhere near the same levels, which has left some liaisons to cut services and staff and lament a near future with lowered capacity to count and serve homeless students.
“There’s going to be a number of families that just fall under the radar,” Post said. “I anticipate we will see a huge drop in McKinney-Vento numbers; those families will just not be served or identified.”
Some districts do rely on funds from the federal McKinney-Vento law, but educators say the 1987 act was never adequately funded by the state or federal government. Funding cycles are every three years, and it’s a competitive grant that reaches few districts. California received less than $15 million in this funding for the 2022-23 school year, for example, which went to just 6% of the state’s school districts, according to an analysis by SchoolHouse Connection and the University of Michigan’s Poverty Solutions program.
The state has released billions of dollars in recent years to address general homelessness. But funds aimed at youth are often targeted to those over the age of 18, including $56 million in new grants announced Friday by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office.
Liaisons have also long highlighted that few of those dollars ultimately reach students who are living doubled-up — where more than one family lives in a single home due to financial crises — which is how the majority of homeless students in the state and nationwide live. Doubling-up is identified as homelessness under the McKinney-Vento act, but not under other federal definitions of homelessness.
And while schools receive extra funding for homeless students from the state through the state’s Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF, this stream is often limited in how it can be spent and is shared among several vulnerable student groups with differing needs.
“There is a part of really acknowledging to the community that other special populations receive state funding to be able to carry out the responsibilities and to dedicate staff to do that work” while homeless students rely on the limited federal dollars, said Chamberlain, who is also one of three leads for the state’s Homeless Education Technical Assistance Center network.
Advocates have pushed for the state to, at a minimum, match the McKinney-Vento dollars California receives, but that amount has yet to make it into the state budget.
Despite the increases, liaisons and advocates are clear that the rising numbers alongside decreasing dedicated funding puts kids at risk.
“If we cannot identify these kids early and serve them and ensure they go on to a choice-filled adulthood, they’re so much more likely to end up experiencing homelessness as an adult,” Olmos said.
EdSource data journalist Daniel J. Willis and reporter Emma Gallegos contributed to this story.