How can we better support students experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity?

Universities are large and complex communities, bringing together thousands of students, staff, services and regulations. At their best, they provide consistency, fairness and support at scale, ensuring each student remains visible as an individual with a distinct story, set of strengths and hopes for the future.

For students experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity, this is not always the case. 

Seven per cent of students reported experiencing homelessness during their studies, while 36 per cent had considered withdrawing from university because of the cost of rent, the 2025 National Student Accommodation Survey found. This highlights a relationship between housing instability and student continuation.

For the purposes of this article, student homelessness encompasses students with no secure, safe or suitable accommodation available to them, including those who are “rough sleeping”, living in temporary accommodation or “sofa surfing”. It also includes those facing imminent eviction or experiencing housing insecurity that hinders their ability to participate successfully in higher education. Universities must look carefully at how they define and include students in categories such as homelessness.

Student homelessness is an intersectional need

Student homelessness is often connected with family breakdown, estrangement, domestic abuse, care experience, financial hardship, mental health challenges, immigration status, caring responsibilities or a combination of these factors. Two students may both be recorded as “at risk of homelessness”, yet their circumstances, needs, strengths and aspirations may be entirely different. Understanding these intersections can help universities respond with insight and care.

Universities can design systems that make individual stories visible and easier to respond to. For example, at my institution, a strong personal academic tutoring approach means that the student retention, attendance monitoring, mental health and well-being and disability support teams can work with academics to better understand and engage at-risk students. Our integrated approach to student retention and casework, along with insights from student engagement and attendance data, drive multi-team interventions early in the semester. Case conferencing, integrated support teams, personal tutoring relationships and dedicated case managers can all create continuity, reduce repetition and promote joined-up support.

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Support works best when staff take time to understand each student’s circumstances, hear their account of what has happened, and recognise the identity, agency and potential that sit alongside their personal crisis. Policies, eligibility criteria and referral pathways remain essential, and they are most powerful when they help staff shape support around the student.

A people-centred approach brings consistency and compassion together. It creates systems where professional judgement, flexibility and good governance can work side by side. Staff can then ask both “What support is available?” and “What will help this student continue, succeed and thrive?”

Don’t let housing insecurity define the educational experience

Remembering that students experiencing homelessness are, first and foremost, students also means recognising their autonomy, interests and choices. Alongside practical support, they should be able to take part in the wider social and cultural life of the university on their own terms. Like any student, they may want to join a society, attend an event, volunteer, campaign, play sports, make friends or simply enjoy fun moments.

For students experiencing homelessness, meaningful inclusion creates genuine opportunities to participate, contribute and choose how they connect with university life. Simple ways to foster this include:

1. Organise low-cost social activities that enable students to interact with a range of peers. Book clubs, group hikes and themed movie nights are all great examples.
2. Target the institution, not the student – create solutions that are targeted at courses, programmes or spaces that enable homeless students to engage without labelling it as an intervention. For example, we run a student co-creation programme called Changemakers, which is about enabling students to use their wide-ranging lived experience to shape the student experience.
3. Develop peer networks – students generally respond well to peer-led programmes and activities because they help foster belonging and develop leadership skills.
4. Shift the narrative – students with experience of housing insecurity are often concerned about how they will be perceived if they disclose their housing status. Universities can respond by creating a culture of care among staff and students. This can involve staff development and partnership with non-profit organisations. It can also involve creating campaigns on social behaviours aimed at students and promoting research and insights co-created with students that highlight homeless students in a positive light.

At its heart, a university’s response to homelessness should be grounded in dignity, community and possibility. Students should experience the institution as a place that recognises them as individuals with unique experiences, aspirations and potential. 

Melanie-Marie Haywood is dean of students at Birmingham City University.

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