Calling it a small step to help students, Assemblymember Marc Berman held a press conference Tuesday to discuss his legislation, AB 302, which would require community colleges to grant overnight access to campus parking facilities for homeless students to sleep in their vehicles.
“We’re here to address the crisis of homelessness that our community college students are facing right now,” Assemblymember Berman said during the press conference at the Capitol.
A recent report released by the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office and The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, which surveyed nearly 40,000 students at 57 community colleges, found that 19 percent of respondents experienced homelessness in the previous year. Extrapolated to California’s community college population of 2.1 million students, that means nearly 400,000 students have experienced homelessness in the last year.