This story was originally published by EdSource. Sign up for their daily newsletter.
When Rashida Crutchfield began her doctoral degree at Cal State Long Beach in 2009, she knew she wanted to study the college experience for homeless students.
There was one problem. She couldn’t find any research about college homelessness. “The imposter syndrome in me thought I was just doing it wrong,” said Crutchfield, now a professor at CSULB’s School of Social Work.
So Crutchfield contacted Barbara Duffield, a leading advocate for children experiencing homelessness in the K-12 school system. “I said, ‘I’m not finding anything about the college experience for students,’” Crutchfield recalled. She said, ‘There isn’t anything. That’s your job now.’”
That job has kept Crutchfield busy ever since. Her 2018 research finding that nearly 11% of California State University students experienced homelessness coincided with an emerging consensus among California lawmakers and higher education leaders that housing and food insecurity can be a major barrier for would-be college graduates. Together with her colleagues at CSULB’s Center for Equitable Higher Education, the research arm of the university’s basic needs program, Crutchfield has also assessed how well college programs intended to help meet students’ basic needs are working.
One such program is College Focused Rapid Rehousing, launched in 2020 at selected community colleges and California State University campuses, including CSULB. Backed by tens of millions of dollars in state funding, the aim of the pilot is to help students complete college by first moving them into stable housing, taking a more intensive approach than emergency housing vouchers and other short-term help. In a rapid rehousing program, colleges and community housing agencies provide students with rental subsidies, academic support, and case management that prepares them to live independently.
The center’s final evaluation in 2025 found that students who participated in the rapid rehousing pilot were more likely to stay in school than those receiving only a short-term subsidy. About 70% of former rapid rehousing participants surveyed reported living in an apartment they directly leased or owned a year after leaving the program.
Such evaluations of programs focused on addressing homelessness and other issues on campuses are one of the ways colleges can make sure their programs are providing what students need — and not merely “what we feel works,” Crutchfield said.
“It’s easy to make decisions because this feels right, rather than what is,” said Crutchfield, a 2025 winner of Cal State’s Wang Family Excellence Award honoring achievements by the university system’s faculty and staff. “Once we establish a program — once students hear that that program does this, and that doesn’t work for them — that reputation lasts, and so it undermines our success with students.”
EdSource spoke with Crutchfield about how she began researching college housing instability and the potential impact of longer-term investments in rehousing students.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you first get interested in student housing and basic needs?
I was working (as a social worker and volunteer coordinator) for Covenant House California (in Hollywood), which provides shelter and services for youth experiencing homelessness. And some of the residents there were going to college, and they were experiencing barriers that had less to do with their homelessness and more to do with the typical functioning of colleges and universities.
So, for instance, we had a resident who had gone to community college to register, and she’d gone to financial aid because there was a problem with her financial aid. And the financial aid administrators said, “We need your parents’ tax information and the student’s for financial aid purposes.” The student said that she was homeless and she didn’t have them. The financial aid officer said, “Well, you don’t look homeless, and you’re probably just fighting with your parents. You need to go home and get those, and you can’t come to school without them, and you’re probably going to miss this semester anyway.”
Six months, a whole semester, would have been devastating for her. So she came back weeping. We have a feisty Irish nun named Sister Margaret Farrell at Covenant House, and she went up to that financial aid office and fought for her, and she got into housing.
But I thought, “What happens to everyone who doesn’t have a feisty Irish nun?”
What are some examples of really robust programs and services that you’ve seen emerge in California to serve homeless students?
College Focused Rapid Rehousing was a very significant investment by the California Legislature to support robust programs. For many campuses, we started with what I might call short-term approaches to addressing homelessness, and that might include short stays in dorms, anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and then maybe a one-time emergency grant of $1,000.
Those things are really helpful if you have a short-term need, but if you’re experiencing long-term homelessness, that’s not going to do it. And so College Focused Rapid Rehousing is a strong model for a deeper investment in students, which includes case management and longer-term subsidy for student housing.
You’re researching rapid rehousing in the context of college. Are there any surprising findings or policy implications that are coming out of that work?
(Students who have robust support) are definitely doing better than students who are receiving the short-term support, but they also are matching or exceeding the larger population of students. And I think that speaks to both the need for stabilization, the financial stabilization, but it also speaks to the belonging, connectedness that students experience.
I think political tides can suggest to us that helping more students with shorter-term responses can feel better, but deeper investment in a smaller number of students has more actual beneficial outcomes for students. I think that’s the thing that I really want to drive forward.
Where do you feel that California colleges and universities could be doing more?
We really want to at least continue, if not expand, the work in College Focused Rapid Rehousing, or other kinds of responses to homelessness and food insecurity. For our students, I would love to see a linkage between our efforts for addressing homelessness more broadly to include students. Right now, they’re very separate. There’s education over here and housing, homelessness over here. For this population, there’s clear overlap, because students don’t end their lives in their universities. They’re also out here in our communities. And so the joining of those efforts at every level is (an) opportunity and room for connectivity and growth.
We, inside of our institutions, have to sustain our commitment to addressing these needs. Our staff, who are working directly with students who are experiencing these issues, are often wearing many, many hats and are doing many things. So I really honor the staff who are so committed to this work, and I want to see them continually supported. The students, obviously, first. But if the staff are rowing the boat and they can’t row, then the students have no boat to travel in.