New America Releases Brief on Housing Insecurity Rates among Caregiving College Students
May 11, 2026
By Julie Walker, NLIHC Program Manager, Opportunity Starts at Home
New America, an Opportunity Starts at Home (OSAH) Campaign Roundtable member, recently released a brief, No Place to Land: Housing Insecurity Among Caregiving College Students, highlighting the frequency of housing insecurity among caregiving college students. The jointly released brief with Trellis Strategies draws on new data from the Student Financial Wellness Survey, a national survey that documents the financial wellbeing and success of postsecondary students, and lays out concrete steps that institutions, states, and the federal government can take to address housing insecurity among caregiving students.
The report uses data collected from the Fall 2025 Student Financial Wellness Survey (SFWS), which New America’s Higher Education team partnered with Trellis Strategies on to include questions on housing insecurity for parenting students. Analysis of responses from 24,361 undergraduate students who identified as parents, caregivers for other dependents, or individuals providing financial support for family members revealed three key findings:
- Frequent moves are often out of necessity, not personal choice. After moving to be closer to school, the most common reasons students cited for moving three or more times in a year were due to affordability or safety concerns. Older students, Black and Hispanic students, and students enrolled in two-year colleges face disproportionately high rates of safety-driven or rent-driven moves.
Many caregiving students do not realize that they can ask their school for help with housing costs, and those facing the greatest hardship are often the least likely to know they can request assistance. More than three-quarters of students experiencing basic needs insecurity were unaware that they could request additional housing assistance.
Caregiving students face discrimination in the housing market, which further limits their options. Black caregiving students were nearly twice as likely to report discrimination compared to white students.
The authors highlight ways that federal policy, state policy, and colleges and universities can better support caregiving students facing housing insecurity. At the federal level, this includes increasing investment in emergency aid and establishing a standard definition of parenting students in required campus-level data collection and mandated reporting through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). More comprehensive data on caregiving students will lead to better understanding of the needs of this population, and investment in flexible emergency aid will provide stability to students faced with unanticipated housing costs. At the state level, the authors recommend making housing-related costs eligible for state-funded emergency aid programs and reforming cost-of-attendance policies to better account for housing, childcare, and transportation costs. Along with these policy changes, colleges and universities can provide proactive outreach to make students aware of housing-related aid available to them and integrate housing into existing basic needs supports. While colleges and universities have made significant efforts to address food insecurity, housing insecurity has received less attention due to the complexity and cost of solutions. The authors recommend that institutions without existing housing infrastructure start by building referral relationships with social services agencies and community-based housing organizations. Institutions should also consider investing in housing options for students with dependents. With more informed policymaking at the federal, state, and institutional levels, students balancing college and caregiving will be better supported in their housing stability and educational success.
Read the brief here.