Worries Go Beyond Grades for Homeless Edmonds CC Students

Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a two-day report about the growing number of homeless students in Edmonds. Today, learn how homelessness is affecting Edmonds Community College students. Read our previous stories about the effect on the Edmonds School District, and the psychological toll homelessness has on young students. Patch partnered with Investigate West for this report.

Most students at Edmonds Community College worry about passing a biology exam, buying textbooks or keeping up their GPA.

But for a select group of students, homework and tests are a secondary concern. This steadily growing minority must wonder where they’ll sleep that night. Whether they’ll be able to afford food each day that week. And how they can possibly focus on classes when they have nowhere to go home to.

In the past few years, the number of homeless students attending Edmonds Community College has been climbing. The college knows of at least 150 students without a place to live, but the real number is likely far higher. The counted ones are only those who have come forward to self-identify as homeless when receiving aid for food and supplies.

“The homelessness problem has gotten worse,” said Nicole Allen, president of an EdCC nonprofit group called Project Home Association. “People are losing their homes left and right.”

The students find themselves homeless after losing a job, breaking up with a significant other, fighting with their parents, or going through a divorce. They range in age from 20-somethings to 50-somethings. With the economic downturn of the last several years, more students find themselves struggling to pay rent or find a place on their own.

Some of the college’s homeless students sleep in their cars on campus parking lots, moving the vehicles to another spot when campus security tells them to leave. Others crash on friends’ couches or floors. Some seek beds in local shelters. Others camp out in area parks and even cemeteries.

Housing help

Four female Edmonds Community College students found a place to stay through Project Home Association. The campus group, which formed several years ago to address the homelessness problem, located a four-bedroom apartment at the nearby YWCA Family Village. Through fund-raising and donations, Project Home Association provides $400 a month in rent, and then meets the rest of the cost by asking each woman to provide $200.

Allen, who was once homeless herself, said that she started the group in 2008 after helping out during a campus food and clothing drive. Many of the students who came to collect the donations told Allen they had no place to live and asked her if she knew of any housing less expensive than the on-campus dorms.

Allen, with the help of Project Home Association adviser Nadine McCray, began raising funds and located the apartment in YWCA Family Village. The first woman moved into the apartment in late 2009, and Project Home Association has been finding residents for the home ever since.

The women selected to live in the apartment are either homeless or on the verge of becoming homeless. Until they can afford to move into their own place, they can use the YWCA Family Village as transitional housing.

For the women, Project Home Association came along just when they needed it most. One of the residents, a 49-year-old woman who prefers to just go by Rosemary, had been maxing out all of her credit cards in a desperate attempt to make her $560 per month rent. Rosemary landed a job at Target, but it was only part time, and she couldn’t cover her bills. Food stamps paid for just $16 worth of groceries each month.

“I wasn’t homeless yet but I saw the future, and it was looking very serious,” Rosemary said.

Rosemary had no friends or family members in the Puget Sound area to turn to. Upon moving to Edmonds a year and a half ago, she’d known one former friend from her childhood growing up in Jamaica, but that relationship soon soured. Her children remained in New Jersey, where Rosemary planned to return after completing her degree at Edmonds Community College.

“I didn’t want to go back home without an education,” Rosemary said.

When Rosemary heard about Project Home Association, she thought it could be a lifesaver. With minimal monthly rent payments, she could stop worrying about basic day-to-day survival, and instead re-focus on her classes.

“I didn’t realize how much pressure I was under,” Rosemary said. “I’m so much less stressed.”

Rosemary moved into the four-bedroom apartment in March. While the women share common areas, they each have their own bedrooms with locks on the door. Out of respect for the other inhabitants, they all agree not to smoke, drink alcohol, use drugs or bring in overnight guests. The women also must remain actively enrolled at Edmonds Community College and maintain at least a 2.0 grade point average.

‘A real blessing’

While Project Home Association doesn’t expect the four women to become best of friends, they believe each can find comfort from living with others in similar situations to their own. At EdCC’s dormitory housing, many of the students receive regular financial help from parents, Allen said.           

“Our women are learning to budget, and saving $25 is a big thing,” Allen said. “Other students might drop $25 at a coffee shop.”

Another of Project Home Association’s residents, Akua Kariamu, appreciates living among people who understand her situation. Kariamu, an artist and EdCC student in the nursing certification program, also moved into the YWCA Family Village in March. Unable to pay rent for the past few months, she’d been living with friends and felt emotionally exhausted.

“It was a real blessing to get here and have a place to live,” Kariamu said.

The Project Home Association women recognize that they must begin to develop a game plan for life after the shared apartment. They’ve been working with Homestreet Bank on developing personal budgets and paying off debt.

“This is just a stepping stone,” Kariamu said. “It’s a way for me to get back on my feet.”

Project Home Association currently has no website, but donations to the group can be mailed to: Edmonds Community College Cashier’s Office, Attn: Project Home Association, 20000 68th Ave. W., Lynnwood, WA 98036

Project Home Association will hold its next fund-raiser, a dinner and fashion show called A Night to Remember, in February 2012.