The SJSU Cares Rapid Rehousing Program, a state-funded pilot program that was first established in 2020, is scheduled to end on June 30, which will cease current and future financial aid to students dealing with housing insecurities.
SJSU Cares provides resources and services for students who need help with financial, food and housing insecurities, according to a university webpage.
Case managers are assigned based on students' requests and personally aid students in tackling their hardships.
SJSU Cares is partnered with the Bill Wilson Center, a non-profit community support organization in San Jose, to run the Rapid Rehousing Program at SJSU.
Kristen Weaver, student affairs case manager, said students currently enrolled in the program are working with the Bill Wilson Center and have received more robust financial support.
She said case management is the way to access a number of services in terms of housing.
“If students have questions about what housing options there are in the county of Santa Clara, they can always reach out to us, to me, a case manager, to learn more about what's out there,” Weaver said. “Case management is sort of an overarching support system to get connected to other resources in the area.”
She also said the partnership between SJSU Cares and the Bill Wilson Center will continue to stay strong after the program ends.
Weaver said students will continue to receive support from the center’s individual case management systems and additional programs that support members of the LGBTQ+ community and violent crime victims.
667 requests for assistance were submitted to SJSU Cares from July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2022. The submission form for these requests allowed students to indicate what sort of assistance they needed help with.
30.7% of them required assistance with food resources, 45% needed financial counseling and 64.5% required housing/houseless resources, according to an annual summary statistics report published by SJSU Cares.
27 people participated in the Rapid Rehousing program during this period of time, funding longer term rental support, employment and budget assistance to its members.
A large majority of students requesting housing assistance have declined emergency housing support because they were housed immediately, but still had concerns with paying rent for their spaces.
Pastor Scott Wagers, founder of the Community Homeless Alliance Ministry (CHAM), is an advocate for the unhoused and the original founder of the San Jose State Student Homeless Alliance (SHA) back in 1991.
He said his ministry has been around for about 22 years and has sheltered unhoused individuals in the back of the church despite it being illegal.
“[Students] need housing, they need resources,” Wagers said. “When you don't have a roof over your head, it's always challenging.”
Wagers said the idea of students being houseless when he was at San Jose State in the ‘90s was unheard of.
“The cost of housing is the principal problem that contributes to people becoming unhoused,” Wagers said. “Students really represent that probably more than anybody because here are young people trying to, on one hand, put their lives together, get an education, obviously make higher wages and then they're stumbling over the cost of housing.”
Wagers said his work consists of going out to homeless encampments along San Jose’s creek beds to provide support to them.
He’s worked alongside San Jose State sociology professor Scott Myers-Lipton, whose activism class led SHA to hold a successful protest in front of Interim SJSU President Stephen Perez. He was the first university president to ever attend one of their protests, according to an April 22, 2022 article by San Jose Spotlight.
Anthony Majano, senior sociology major and president of SHA, spoke as the student organizations’ president at this protest.
He said that he thought the ending of the Rapid Rehousing Program is not fair to the students of the seven CSU schools that participated in this pilot program.
Majano said this could potentially affect hundreds if not thousands of students utilizing rapid rehousing programs throughout California State Universities with no replacement announced.
“The university should better advertise its existing programs to help [students] to some sort of relief for their issues, and if the issue persists then more funding should be allocated to these programs in order to improve their ability to address this crisis,” Majano said. “It is incredibly heartbreaking to think about how little care is being given to these students.''
