When students at Monroe Community College experience homelessness, they often meet with Nicole Meyer. Since 2023, Meyer has been the homeless liaison at the two-year public institution in Rochester, New York, which is within the State University of New York system.
Nearly two years ago, SUNY required each of its 64 colleges to designate a person to serve as homeless liaison on their campuses — part of a nationwide movement to create such a position at higher education institutions.
Higher ed institutions and states throughout the U.S. have passed laws and implemented policies over the past decade or so designating homeless liaisons on campuses. The movement has been fueled by a growing recognition that many students experience homelessness during their college years, experts say.
Around 8% of undergraduates and nearly 5% of graduate students reported experiencing homelessness in a 2020 survey that was published in 2023 from National Center for Education Statistics.
“There has long been an assumption that if someone was in college, that they had the financial well-being to cover all their expenses,” said Rashida Crutchfield, executive director of the Center for Equitable Higher Education at California State University, Long Beach. “As higher education has learned that [homelessness] is part of the student experience, you’re seeing a lot more responsiveness to our responsibility to address it.”
Students experiencing homelessness typically don’t have family or friends who have attended college and therefore lack a network to help them navigate the financial aid system, campus life and important resources, said Barbara Duffield, executive director of the nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection.
A homeless liaison thus becomes a point person on campus who can connect these students with resources that will help them remain enrolled through graduation, Duffield said.
In fact, a lack of housing can hinder students’ ability to focus on their studies, causing them to drop out, Duffield said. Additionally, such students often grapple with mental health issues, a sense of isolation and family-related issues, she said. On top of all that, they often must balance jobs with their classes, she said.
In Meyer’s case, by fall 2024 she had worked with 173 Monroe students experiencing housing insecurity or homelessness — roughly 2% of the college’s student population. A disproportionate share of those students are Black, Brown and women, Meyer said.
Meyer helps students find sustainable on- or off-campus housing — a challenging task given surging rental costs in Rochester. She works with the financial aid office and other administrators to help the students access scholarships, grants and the college’s emergency funds.
In addition, Meyer said she connects with school districts to help prepare high schoolers experiencing homelessness for the transition to college and partners with local organizations to help Monroe students navigate health insurance, transportation, child care and a host of other needs. Essentially, she’s the designated point person for all those students.
“I’m a one-stop-shop for basic needs, and housing and security,” said Meyer.
The origins of homeless liaisons
The homeless liaison role emerged at the higher ed level following the 2007 passage of the federal College Cost Reduction Access Act — a bill that increased funding for Pell Grants, made reforms to the financial aid system such as expanding repayment options for borrowers, and gave unaccompanied homeless youth independent student status when applying for financial aid, Duffield said.
That meant youths living in shelters, outside, in cars, in hotels, or on couches could apply for federal financial aid without their parents’ signatures, she said.
“This was really important because for so many young people, they are not in touch with their parents, they’re not being supported by their parents, and it’s just barrier after barrier after barrier to getting financial aid,” Duffield said.
At the time, Duffield said, colleges lacked knowledge about unaccompanied homeless youth, as well as training to identify those students and address the barriers they face.
Following the 2007 law, Colorado policymakers tried to rectify that knowledge gap by organizing a task force composed of students and higher ed and K-12 administrators. One of the task force’s recommendations called for establishing a single point of contact at every college and university in Colorado, based on a liaison model already used in K-12 districts.
Colorado colleges appointed homeless liaisons in 2009, establishing a first-of-its-kind model in the U.S., according to a fact sheet from the state’s education department.
Other states, including North Carolina and Michigan, followed Colorado’s lead by informally adopting a homeless liaison model, Duffield said. Then states started codifying such liaison positions into law, with California and Louisiana doing so in 2016, Tennessee and Nevada in 2019, and Maine, Maryland, Illinois, Florida, and Arkansas between 2020 and 2022. Colorado finally codified the task force’s recommendation of designating a campus liaison into law just last year.
These states saw an opportunity to help students receive support services they may need, considering they are often first-generation college students with a history of trauma, abuse, neglect, deep poverty and instability, Duffield said.
What do the liaisons do?
Terry Mena began his role as Northeastern Illinois University’s homeless liaison in 2021 after the Illinois state Legislature mandated the position for all colleges in the state.
When Mena receives a report from a student, faculty or staff member, or high school counselor that a university student may be experiencing homelessness, he will reach out to the student and conduct an intake with other administrators to better understand their situation and create an action plan, he said.
“We begin to pull together on-campus and potentially off-campus resources to assist the student based on each circumstance,” Mena said.
Homeless liaisons also help students navigate the financial aid process, Crutchfield said.
Students under age 24 can receive an exemption allowing their colleges to assess aid based on their own financial status — rather than that of their parents. But financial aid offices don’t always ensure eligible students receive that aid, Crutchfield said.
“Financial support is critical to student retention in colleges and universities,” said Crutchfield. “This is true for any student, but in particular for students experiencing homelessness. If they don’t have access to financial aid, they don’t have access to our institution.”
However, the work homeless liaisons do varies with the institution, Duffield said.
At some colleges, “other than being able to answer questions or help with challenges around financial aid, it’s a pretty limited role,” said Duffield. “In other places, it’s more expansive.”
Being a homeless liaison is usually not a standalone role. Rather, it’s conducted by a staff member who works in financial aid, student support or student advising offices, she added. Mena, for instance, is Northeastern Illinois’ vice president of student affairs and dean of students, and Mayer is a student services specialist at Monroe.
Training also varies. Mena and other Northeastern Illinois campus staff and administrators received training to conduct the work through the Beegle Poverty Institute — a professional development course through consulting firm Communication Across Barriers. The course helped them understand the causes and complexities of poverty and how to help students become self-reliant, he said.
Meyer, on the other hand, never received formal training for being a homeless liaison, but she tries to take advantage of professional development opportunities, such as by taking courses at the college that may be helpful. She also said she built experience doing this kind of work within the financial aid office before the liaison role was created.
She also talks with other homeless liaisons through a SUNY homeless liaison network about strategies for approaching scenarios they face on the job, such as identifying students who might be homeless or building relationships with landlords, she said.
“As higher education has learned that [homelessness] is part of the student experience, you’re seeing a lot more responsiveness to our responsibility to address it.”
Rashida Crutchfield
Executive director, Center for Equitable Higher Education
Additionally, homeless liaisons have varying workloads.
Since launching its homeless liaison position in fall 2023, SUNY Cortland has received fewer than five referrals to the program, including a student who needed temporary housing over school break, said Ann Bersani, director of residence life and housing and the homeless liaison at SUNY Cortland, a public four-year institution in New York.
“All of the cases referred to me as liaison have been solved by the student without accessing additional services.”
Nonetheless, should students ever need the services of a homeless liaison, SUNY Cortland is prepared, Bersani said.
“To have somebody who is a point person, who understands what you’re going through, who knows what resources are available on campus and off-campus, who can take that extra time, whether it’s pointing in the right direction to community resources or [pointing] in the right direction on campus,” Duffield said, “just makes all the difference.”
