As he put on the costume for Billy Bronco — the mascot for California State Polytechnic University, Pomona — Geoffrey, a 21-year-old psychology major, got to momentarily escape his personal troubles and focus on entertaining students and their families at orientation.
“I can actually dance pretty well, so I was able to do some dances that I could normally do,” Geoffrey told Diverse of his mascot experience, which he says aligns with his dream of being an entertainer.
“My number one mission is to make people smile because I want to bring them some kind of joy, even if it’s just for a moment,” says Geoffrey, who earns $16.50 an hour in his position as a student orientation leader.
What those who interacted with Billy Bronco on that hot summer day in late July didn’t know, is that the person inside the horse mascot was on the verge of being homeless.
As Geoffrey strove to entertain other students’ families — wearing a muscular version of the mascot that had on a green jersey emblazoned with #22 — it provided a brief reprieve from the fact that Geoffrey remains estranged from his own family, putting him at risk of not having a place to stay.
Fortunately, a state-funded rapid rehousing program came to the rescue and gave Geoffrey six months of housing. Geoffrey secured the keys to the two-bedroom apartment in late July and can stay there until January as long as he works on finding employment, signs up for CalFresh and Medi-Cal for food and medical benefits, respectively, and puts aside some money to eventually get his own place. He also has to keep up his grades.
When he spoke with Diverse in early August, Geoffrey had the place to himself but was told a roommate could arrive any day.
For Geoffrey, all that mattered was having a safe place to stay — even if it’s a few miles from campus — as he prepares to complete his last two years of studies as an undergrad at Cal Poly Pomona.
“It was the most helpful thing ever,” Geoffrey says of the rapid rehousing program, which he sought out after he discovered he was at the end of the waitlist for campus housing at Cal Poly Pomona, where campus housing is scarce — only 16% of students reside on campus.
“Honestly, if it wasn’t for this, I’d probably be homeless right now,” Geoffrey says, “because I have not really talked to my family at all in like months or years.”
He credits his case manager, Helen Lara, and other program officials with giving him a lifeline.
“They moved forward with my case pretty quickly,” Geoffrey says — a glowing testament to the urgency with which program officials responded to his need for housing.
A Hidden Crisis on Campus
In many ways, Geoffrey’s plight is emblematic of a much larger hidden crisis of housing insecurity among today’s college students.
According to a 2025 report from Temple University’s Hope Center for Student Basic Needs, 8% of undergraduate and 5% of graduate students — more than 1.5 million students — are experiencing homelessness. The same report says 48% of college students are experiencing housing insecurity.
“Students who experience housing insecurity or homelessness report dire consequences to their well-being and acute barriers to their educational progress,” states an April 2025 evaluation of California’s College Focused Rapid Rehousing program.
The evaluation is from the Center for Equitable Higher Education, headed by Dr. Rashida Crutchfield, an associate professor of social work at California State University, Long Beach.
“Struggling to make ends meet has a significant impact on students’ mental and physical health,” states the report, which was co-authored by Crutchfield, who served as co-principal investigator. “These students report high levels of mental health concerns, such as anxiety, fear, irritability, depression, among other worries.”
In 2024, Democratic lawmakers in both chambers of Congress introduced bills known as the Basic Assistance for Students In College Act — or the BASIC Act — but neither bill garnered Republican support or went anywhere before the onset of Trump 2.0 and the cost-cutting era of DOGE.
Among other things, BASIC would have established nearly $1 billion in competitive grants for colleges and universities to address the unmet basic needs of students, such as adequate food and safe housing.
The Housing for Homeless Student Act, which would have permitted homeless students to qualify for low-income housing tax credits, also failed to make any headway.
In the current session, the Campus Housing Affordability for Foster Youth Act, which was introduced in June and enjoys bipartisan support, would permit students who’ve been in foster care to use housing vouchers for campus housing — a practice that is currently restricted.
Irrespective of whether there’s enough political will on Capitol Hill to tackle housing insecurity for college students, states can still step up — and may have to as the Trump administration continues to shift more responsibility for education from the federal government to the states.
That’s what California did in 2019, when the state started to provide ongoing funds to the California State Universities, California Community Colleges, and University of California campuses in order to undertake what Crutchfield’s report refers to as “the country’s largest campus-community approach to address the crisis of student homelessness on California public higher education campuses.”
As of 2025, California spends $31 million annually on campus rapid rehousing programs.
“This funding includes both shortterm housing assistance for housing insecure students and a new strategy to address the needs of students experiencing homelessness — College Focused Rapid Rehousing,” the report states.
The program has housed 639 students since its inception in spring 2024. The median monthly subsidy for students in the program was $990.
But did it work?
Measuring Success
Crutchfield’s evaluation suggests that the rapid rehousing initiative is having a positive effect on student well-being and academic success, boosting, for instance, the chances of staying in school and graduating, but certain challenges remain.
According to key findings from the report:
Participants experienced “substantial housing stability,” with an average of nine consecutive months of housing, or the equivalent of two semesters of college.
The majority of students had a “successful exit” from the program due to graduation or finding their own place.
The overwhelming majority of participants were living in stable housing a year after leaving the program, but being able to pay the rent afterward posed a problem for many students, with 62% having experienced a rent increase that was “difficult to pay” and 25% not being able to pay or fully pay at least one rent payment.
Participation “mitigated strain and distraction due to housing insecurity and resulted in higher levels of confidence in CSU participants’ ability to manage work and life.” However, the need to work posed an “ongoing challenge to academic engagement” and made many feel “less connected to campus than their peers.”
Participants had a “significantly higher probability of staying in school or graduating” than students who received short-term housing assistance.
The program also found problems with outreach, lamenting that rapid rehousing programs were “not well known to students.”
Program uncertainty also presented a challenge. “When campuses had limited capacity or were not sure about the stability of the program, they were reluctant to actively recruit students who may have acute needs,” the report states.
Case managers were an “essential source of support for many students,” the report states, adding that regular contact “laid the foundation for a supportive relationship.”
“A significant majority (69%) of CFRR participants agreed or strongly agreed that they met with their case managers regularly. Students emphasized the constant support, reliability, non-judgmental approach and helpfulness of the program staff.”
But not all students liked having case managers — the report says the requirement to participate in case management was a “disincentive to enrollment and engagement” for some students.
At Cal Poly Pomona, the school housed about 43 students in emergency housing on and off campus during the 2024-2025 academic year, data provided by the school show.
“Out of the 43 students, only three students remained unhoused after receiving emergency housing,” says Davonna Watkins, associate director of care services at the Care Center at Cal Poly Pomona.
Watkins says 40 students reported living with family, living in on-campus housing, or were able to secure their own apartment or room to rent. The three students who remained unhoused stopped talking to their case manager, so their housing situation could not be determined, Watkins says.
Geoffrey credits his case manager, Helen Lara, with telling him about the rapid rehousing program after he discovered he was far down on the waitlist for campus housing.
Now, he’s focused on finding employment. As of late, he’s been polishing up cover letters he can use to apply for various jobs.
“Ideally after college I would like to become a personal trainer, but I’m just looking for a job at this point that can help me save up money to get an apartment,” Geoffrey says.
Most importantly, he can now say something that might not have been possible without the housing assistance provided as he embarks on another academic school year:
“I’m going to college still.”
