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Silicon Valley may be the center of job growth and economic prosperity in California, but a greater number of families with children are struggling to stay housed, leading to a growing number of homeless students enrolled in public schools.
Information collected by the California Department of Education shows that the state’s homeless student population has increased by nearly 35 percent in four years, from 220,000 in 2011 to 297,000 in 2014, according to data compiled by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health. That amounts to roughly 4.8 percent of state’s the entire student body.
In Santa Clara County, the percent of homeless students is significantly lower at 1.6 percent, but it’s increasing at an alarming rate. The county’s homeless student population jumped by a whopping 79 percent from 2011 to 2014, according to the foundation’s database. Of the roughly 4,500 homeless students in the county, 80 percent are estimated to be living in some kind of shared-housing situation due to loss of housing or economic hardship, according federal guidelines. An estimated 12 percent of students are living in temporary shelters.
The issue came to the forefront at the Feb. 23 Mountain View City Council meeting, when city staff reported that 30 students in the Mountain View Whisman School District are currently homeless. Council member Ken Rosenberg called it a “disgrace.”
But the staff report does not take into account the number of students who were homeless at some point throughout the year, which is estimated to be much higher. During the 2013-14 school year, an estimated 45 students in the Mountain View Whisman School District and 90 students in the Mountain View-Los Altos High School District were homeless at some point.
Housing affordability tends to be the top reason why families in California suddenly find themselves without a place to live, according to Shahera Hyatt, director of the California Homeless Youth Project. Hyatt monitors student homelessness at the California Research Bureau, and said the economic rebound in recent years has left a lot of people behind, creating poverty and destabilization as the cost of living continues to increase.
“The problem is particularly acute in California,” Hyatt said of the rise in homeless students. “And that’s just what’s being identified. It doesn’t include students that have dropped out or haven’t been identified by the school district.”
The primary fall-back option for families who suddenly lose housing due to economic hardship is living in a shared housing situation, like temporarily crashing at a friend’s or parent’s home. Hyatt said students in these living conditions tend to have problems and trouble focusing on academic work.
“People are funding their own sort of survival strategies, like living in the cars or living with way, way too many people in the home,” Hyatt said. “Sharing such crowded spaces really leads to conflict.”
Homeless students have several key rights protecting their ability to attend public school without documentation. Under the federal McKinney-Vento Act, students have a right to continue to attend their “school of origin” even if homelessness forces them to move outside of school boundaries or out of the school district entirely. The act also requires school districts to seek out students who are homeless and report the total number to the state, which Hyatt said has been a weak spot for many school districts.
“It’s definitely an undercount. Sometimes school districts return with zero, and we know that’s not the case,” she said. “It’s federal law that you have to identify homeless students.”
At the Mountain View-Los Altos High School District, for example, homelessness is determined by proof of residency forms and self reporting, according to Associate Superintendent Brigitte Sarraf. Once they are identified, students automatically qualify for the Federal Free Lunch Program and have access to the district’s social worker and Community Health Awareness Council (CHAC) counselors, Sarraf said.
Homelessness takes a toll
Homelessness has certainly taken its toll on local students. CHAC counselors working directly with homeless students have noticed they lack focus on classroom activities, get sick more often and have shown psychosomatic symptoms, according to Naomi Nakano-Matsumoto, executive director at CHAC. She said they also tend to be disconnected and isolated from their friends and peers.
“It’s hard to be homeless, particularly in an affluent area,” Nakano-Matsuomto said. “They don’t want their friends to know that they don’t have a nice home to live in.”
Sarraf said that the high school district saw a particularly large uptick in the 2013-14 school year with 77 students defined as homeless under the McKinney-Vento definition of homelessness. But when it gets boiled down to just students living in shelters, cars, hotels and motels, she said the number drops down to 16 students — the figure that the district prefers to use.
“I think you would agree that families that sublease space or who live with relatives are not homeless, although the State Department of Education reporting protocol identifies them as homeless,” Sarraf said.
The number has decreased significantly since 2014, in part because the count included a handful of non-homelessness related cases, like exchange students living with host families.
Sarraf did not explain the remaining discrepancy between the district’s count and the data pulled from the California Department of Education’s demographic information. Hyatt said the number should be the same unless the district takes the unusual move of refining the list over the course of the school year.
Beyond the head count, the McKinney-Vento Act ensures that eligible homeless students have full access to free school meals and transportation, and requires school districts to assign a homeless student liaison to make sure parents and students are aware of their rights. Again, Hyatt said, this can be a weak spot for many school districts that fall short of addressing homeless student’s federal civil rights. In some cases, she said, a single person can get stuck handling hundreds of cases.
“Case loads for folks designated to work with homeless students are so astronomical that it’s unreasonable to think they will be able to provide one-on-one care,” she said.
Nubia Avina, the liaison for homeless students in the Mountain View Whisman School District, told the Voice in an interview last year that school is an important cornerstone for homeless students who need some level of consistency in their lives. It also includes a free or reduced-price lunch to make sure students get regular meals. But it can be hard to get families to admit they are homeless because they are unaware of the laws protecting their children’s right to attend public schools.
A lack of training and funding
School districts across the state have not made it a priority to identify homeless students, despite the existing laws on the books. A report from the California Homeless Youth Project found that many schools neglect to identify students as homeless once they’ve provided proof of residency, while others simply haven’t trained staff to understand the obligations school districts have under the McKinney-Vento Act.
This could be, in part, because there’s no incentive to get an accurate count. Data on the number of homeless students does not determine or affect any funding received under the act, making it less palatable for districts to “expend significant time and resources to identify homeless children and youth,” according to the report.
School funding under the state’s new Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) system also excludes any mention of homeless students as a target for state funding, and does not explicitly identify them as “target” students in need of additional resources. In a report titled California’s Homeless Students: A Growing Population, Hyatt advocated for a shift in focus towards some of the most vulnerable students in California public schools. She said schools need to make homeless student attendance and academic success a high priority, which requires inclusion in LCAP funding.
“We haven’t done enough, as a state, to put funding and coordination behind the issue,” Hyatt told the Voice.
We’ve watched as rents soared into impossible territory for many people. The cost of operation / mortgage payments remained constant or even declined as interest rates fell. So what happened in Mountain View?
Greed, pure and simple. Landlords and rental property owners, if you want to see the causal factor for this homelessness simply look in the mirror.
Although this may come across as a malicious statement sometimes there isn’t anyway around the truth except to face it head-on. If you can break even or make a small profit then why run a family, including their children, onto the street just because you can make a few more dollars doing so?
Greed can spell the death knell of a stable society. Fortunately the multiple apartment units being built almost everywhere should, assuming the laws of supply and demand are still in place, result in lots of vacant units and . . . rental price reductions.
“I think you would agree that families that sublease space or who live with relatives are not homeless, although the State Department of Education reporting protocol identifies them as homeless,” Sarraf said.
Wow, Ms. Sarraf. And who do you sublease space from to speak with such authority? It seems like there is a disconnect here between the public servant the children she serves.
we need to build a great big wall
@ RankingJill of Monta Loma If this is the ‘well informed on public policy’ parent-of-students Jill I know in Monta Loma, you should be using your real (registered) name. If you are going to run for Board office this Nov., it might behove you to make sure the electorate (and others) know how well informed you are – and what you stand for.
I always admired Mr. Chris Chiang, since 2004, for doing this in his discussions on Public Policy. I have also admired it in Greg Coladonato and Ellen Wheeler.
Part of the MVWSD problem is to identify these students, to document ‘need of services’ and to do like MVLAHS Dist. does (Brigitta rah!) and get them ASAP signed up for federal meals program if they are not yet enrolled. This will/mightl get 20% more funds (ah – IF we were a ‘state funded’ district) for these students / above Basic Grant. It will get Title 1 funds per/student (thank you Dr. Skelly/Dr. Rudolp) for enrolling us again.
SN is a trustee of MVWSD. Usual disclaimer, These are his own opinions and not MVWSD’s
“I think you would agree that families that sublease space or who live with relatives are not homeless, although the State Department of Education reporting protocol identifies them as homeless,” Sarraf said.
No, I would not agree. Often these children are in very precarious situations and do not know where they will be sleeping at any given night.
“If this is the ‘well informed on public policy’ parent-of-students Jill I know in Monta Loma, you should be using your real (registered) name.”
You just have to be the bully, don’t you?
Do us all a favor, and LEAVE. Mountain View will be better off for it.
Displacing lower income people is what you get when you resist increasing housing inventory in an area of growing population and income. You have a choice – accept more density, noise, and bustle and make life easier for your neighbors, or cling to things as they are, resist change, and watch higher income people displace ever increasing segments of the population. I’m a home owner, and I really do hope that we build a lot more housing, even if it makes my house worth less than what I paid for it recently, because it’s better for the area and for the future of the area. I want my kids to grow up knowing a variety of people from all walks of life, not just working age tech people at the peak of their careers.
The Bay Area’s job growth and wage growth hasn’t been in teaching or retail or services, it’s been mostly in tech and wherever that wealth trickles down, so statements like, “Silicon Valley may be the center of job growth and economic prosperity in California” don’t make sense.
hello all
I’ve lived in Mountain View for decades and never would I dream of the problems this city now faces. The willingness of the City Council to open the doors for more jobs, in the 1000s, near and around Google, without a concomitant dedication to increase housing accessibility has resulted in families being pushed out of their homes and traffic problems that are outright deadly.
I find it sickening that property owners raise rents so high that only a narrow demographic of renters can pay, and they do so with eyes wide open, and a smile. Yes, I have seen this smile and witnessed the glee in landlord’s voices over their new pots of gold. And there is no stopping this greed. Without any kind of stops in place, landlords will do as they please and will continue to treat residents as objects of revenue.
And the traffic? How many people have to be killed while standing on the sidewalk, or riding their bikes in the bike lanes? Running red lights has become the norm in many of our intersections (Grant and E Camino is just one) and there seems to be no effort to address this problem.
Both the Mountain View City Council and to some extent MV law enforcement seem to have been lulled into a dreamy sleep that renders both entities ineffective and unable to take care of Mountain View residents.
Wake up Mountain View leaders.
@mvresident2003 — How about treating them as human beings? Or is that a concept you can’t wrap your über-Libertarian mind around?
@Judy you nailed it. you stated very clearly exactly what I feel and probably many others.
@Resign Nelson, you too
@Judy: The land lords who won’t raise rent to market rate are a very rare bunch, most will adjust it as fast as they can. The only way to stop them is to have sufficient housing inventory for the iron fist of the market to drive rents down.
@mvresident2003 — I guess in your world, you only see dollar signs.
Maybe if saw human beings as human beings, you *might* understand what Judy is trying to tell you. *Might*.
@Steven Nelson of Cuesta Park
“Jill I know in Monta Loma, you should be using your real (registered) name.”
…
“Part of the MVWSD problem is to identify these students, to document ‘need of services’ and to do like MVLAHS Dist. does”
It’s a self-defeating problem. Trying to get these kids/families to list themselves as homeless is like trying to get a list of all lawful gun-owners by going door to door asking them. Only the very politically connected or the very stupid will say “yes”, the majority will all lie and say: “No, we don’t own guns, never have, never would.”
People who go homeless are often in violation of multiple local ordinances or have a reasonable fear that they might be. Parents of homeless kids have a fully reasonable fear that child-protective services will come take away their kids and put them into the nightmare of our foster care system.
It is vastly worse for native Spanish speakers who have plenty of reason to fear Immigration as well, even if they are hear legally. Worse yet, to potentially have a similar name as someone on the bloated “terrorist-watch-list”. Nobody even knows how names get on that list and there is no process to get off it.
And consider this, if a kid gets listed with the school District as being homeless and thus can have all sorts of benefits from being on the list, how do you suppose the people they are living with or living in a car in someone’s driveway will feel to find out this kid is registered as homeless?
You think they are going to want to take a chance that the list causes a visit to the location which may then expose other stuff to the authorities?
No, it’s not such an easy problem as holding out some food cupons and telling the kid all he has to do is register as homeless and the government will give him all sorts of goodies.
You got to come up with a much more sophisticated method that people will trust.
Again, imagine your goal was to find out who might be in danger of committing suicide in order to offer them help. Since 66% of gunshot deaths are suicides you might want to know who has guns, but If you go around asking people if they own a gun, almost everyone is going to lie and say “NO”. That wont get you anywhere and is irrelevant to helping the people who need the help you’re offering.
Offer help to homeless kids in a way that CANNOT result in them getting into trouble or getting their families/friends in trouble.
Then you have a starting point.
The government always runs to “registration” as the panacea for all things, but rarely does registration accomplish much of anything significant until the registration is abused by that government and then it’s too late to get unregistered.
Do you honestly think any of us care about how “bad” you have it here? You are missing the point of this discussion completely — long-time residents are being pushed out of Mountain View by the likes of people like you.
Obviously, that doesn’t bother you, but as I’ve said before, this isn’t about you.
Once again, you don’t get it.
But that’s a given with you.
I encourage everyone to familiarize with the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act to make sure every child is guaranteed their right to FAPE. The legal definition is any child who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence. This includes kids living in motels, hotels, and trailer parks, or sharing the housing of others. Also, older children who are not living at home are considered unaccompanied and must also be provided services. The district is REQUIRED to transport these children to and from school and provide food aid plus a host of other services for which they received funding from the federal government. Make sure anyone you know in this situation is aware of their rights.
Double Sigh.
When my parent(s) lost a job, they didn’t get ANY State support. One packed the bags and LEFT to go back to my Grandpa’s farm while the other started the job hunt in the LOCAL ECONOMIC DOWNTURN in the SFBA. ( yes, this is a cyclical problem in the SFBA )
Life on the farm was ” You Don’t Work,, YOU DON’T EAT “. So we did adult work even as children. I even drove a tractor on public roads when I was 12.
NONE OF THIS ” FREE ” ( we actually pay this as a taxpayer ) help was available before. Our education was part California and part Wisconsin.
I wonder if what is needed is for families to go to other areas to broaden their outlook and learn the true values of hard work along with the true value of a dollar.
( I shoveled more S–t than most politicians )
Remember: NONE OF THIS IS FREE, THE TAXPAYERS PAY FOR IT!
Judy, landlords treating residents as objects of revenue. What would you have them treated as? Objects of entitlement?
sorry, can’t let this go, keep coming back to it and frankly, I don’t know if I should laugh as it’s so silly or cry that it’s so silly.
“continue to treat residents as objects of revenue.”
Shame on those landlords expecting to get revenue. Shame on them!
sigh
@mvresident2003
What is “market rate” in the Bay Area? People either pay, or are homeless. We’re not talking about Rolex watches here.
The affordability index in MV gets worse and worse. It is what any financial advisor would call dangerously irresponsible even WELL above median income.
But to you, it’s fine because people keep finding a way to pay it because they don’t want to uproot their kids. Forget they work 2 or more jobs. Forget they now save $0. Forget they teeter on the verge of homelessness even with *engineering* jobs. Forget that people have 3 room mates in a 2 bedroom at 40 years old.
As long as you keep gettin your sweet pay day it’s all good. Too bad those “suckers” were “too dumb” to buy 15 years ago, right???
Well if it’s OK with you, we’ll all start voting. Let’s see over the next few years who has more numbers on their side. Might just be interesting times for you ahead.
&janon it seems you’re under the mistaken opinion that I’m a landlord here in MV. I’m not, I’m just a homeowner who pays dearly to live here but doesn’t expect others to pay for me. I also don’t drive a Tesla, own a Rolex or any other foolish things that seem to be so important to you.
MV is exorbitantly expensive. Either you can afford it or you can’t.
You’re right, it’s not about me, it’s about everybody thinking it’s their inherent right to live here whether they can afford it or not.
Let me ask you a question. I really really want to live in Los Altos, should everyone who is there now subsidize me since I can’t afford it? See, the difference is, I don’t expect anyone to, I realize that I can’t afford it and have to live elsewhere.
Now let’s take it from another perspective. There are thousands who live in abject poverty and would consider you wealthy beyond their imagination. Are you helping them to live in the place they want to be?