Why we need to count homeless college students

It was an FE college tutor who Lydia turned to when she was homeless. Lydia, then 16, was sleeping on her aunt’s sofa after deciding she could no longer live with her parents.

Her tutor listened, and put her in touch with a homelessness charity who in turn found her a social worker.

For Lydia, who I met last year, that first conversation was life-changing. Within weeks, she moved to a women’s hostel where she stayed for 18 months until she was allocated a council flat. She finished college and went to university.

How many other FE students experience housing insecurity while at college? The answer is, there is no way of telling. We have some anecdotal signals, but no reliable data.

Concerns about ‘the closure of community services and increased homelessness within the student population’ were raised in an Association of Colleges’ annual health and wellbeing survey in 2024, while its mental health survey this year found 41 per cent of respondents citing homelessness as a significant influence on the increase in student mental health difficulties.

Concerns were also highlighted in a report by the All Party Parliamentary Group for Students in 2023 which found that ‘cost-of-living pressures on further education students were contributing to homelessness, higher demand for free school meals and social housing, and intergenerational unemployment’.

Clearly, housing instability is a barrier to study and vocational training. Evidence also shows that child and youth homelessness is associated with stress and poorer health, and higher risk of homelessness in adulthood.

It is high time, surely, for some rigorous data collection and analysis of the prevalence and patterns of homelessness among UK further education students.

Risks of homelessness are stacked unevenly; some individuals, and cohorts, are at much higher risk than others.

A key driver of homelessness is low, insecure and fluctuating family income. One in five college students (21 per cent) claimed free school meals at the age of 15 due to low family income, according to the Association of Colleges, almost twice the rate in school sixth forms. Students who are care experienced or have poor mental or physical health face a greater likelihood of housing insecurity.

Periods of transition are also associated with elevated risks of homelessness. For young people aged 16-18, in particular, going to college and often attending three days a week, rather than daily as at school, represents a big, sometimes unsettling change.

The context, of course, is that colleges have suffered perennial neglect over decades, with severe squeezes on funding.

Many college staff, including non-teaching staff, do vital pastoral work in challenging circumstances. Some provide on-campus support for students facing housing insecurity, such as hygiene items or clothes washing.

The goal, however, should be to prevent homelessness from occurring, not to treat its symptoms.

Councils share data with schools about pupils’ backgrounds and financial data; local authorities should do the same with colleges, so that bursaries can be targeted simply and rapidly at students in greatest need.

We need leadership, too, to improve data on homelessness among college students. Ideally, government should do this. But the Association of Colleges could survey member institutions specifically about homelessness. An individual college, or group, might lead the way.

Lydia’s life changes were transformed by a tutor she turned to when she experienced homelessness. One suspects many more college students don’t seek help but struggle to study in temporary housing, sleep on friends’ sofas or compromise their welfare in unsafe housing. We should try to find out.