Alright seven months have passed since the start of the pandemic. Doesn't it feel like seven
years sometimes? Many of us are struggling; some of us are struggling emotionally, some of us are
struggling to make ends meet. Now, interestingly enough you may have seen the statistic
among the hardest hit are college students and an estimated one in five community college students
are experiencing homelessness. Our Bob de Castro is in Cerritos, uh uh at Cerritos College rather in Norwalk
where a food giveaway is underway and I think it really sort of sobered you too to realize that of
all that lineup of people and there's a big lineup of folks needing assistance
there's a lot of college students in there that are that are essentially without a home!
So we've been covering these food distribution lines since the beginning of the pandemic and this
one was particularly eye-opening to me. First of all, as we said people, when we got here at 5 00 a.m.
were already waiting in line and secondly as I show you some of the lines here uh a lot of these
are college students. As you said a staggering number: One in five college students experiencing
some kind of homelessness uh and you know there is a stigma to it so it's really difficult to know
which one of these people are are like the college students but we did have one
young woman to talk to us this morning she said that she was experiencing homelessness
she got help from Cerritos College and got some housing I asked her what it meant to her listen
Student: I was homeless before so I stayed in cars, friend's house, so
just couch surfing pretty much that's where I will be. It's been a blessing, like I can't deny
that um they have gave me a roof for my head you know? Um, it's just, the grants, everything is beautiful.
Bob: And I have to tell you Kayla was just so brave she was so emotional and she said she really wanted
to talk to us because Cerritos College was such a huge help for her providing her with housing here
on campus Cerritos College by the way it's the first college in the state to provide emergency
housing for homeless and they just did it this summer opened up these new town homes here so
Kayla her story was uh was that her she was living with her grandmother her grandmother passed away
and now she was left homeless and she had to figure out how she was going to get to school
how to get the financial assistance. So every student obviously has a different story but
if you think about it there are students who are now at this hour living in their cars and trying
to figure out how to make ends meet Michaela. Michaela: Bob that's the thing, right? We hit you with
some of these statistics. These studies, this news etc... the data, it is so important to put faces to
these stories because these are kids that are supposed to be going to college so they can
better their lives, right? Set them up for success. Set them on the right path for life;
but, if you have this kind of deficit that you're working out of, you're living in the back of your
car, you're having to write your papers in the back seat, this is putting kids at a real deficit!
Bob: So they turn their gymnasium into a distance learning place where they can get wi-fi, they've
given out laptops to some of these students. One of the shocking things to me, Michaela, is that
these college campuses now, you think about this, college campuses are now becoming places where
you have homeless kids and now they have a homeless outreach they now have case workers here
at Cerritos College that specifically work to deal with these homeless students and make sure
that they get the the help that that they need but they're even opening up a food pantry a
permanent food pantry on this campus for students so it's like it's almost like the new normal and
I think after this pandemic we're going to see all these universities now with homeless housing sure
homeless pantries those sorts of things to help out the students that need it. Michaela: This is Cerritos
College but I imagine if we were to talk to other, you know, community colleges around the area and
even the universities they would probably say they're experiencing the same thing, Bob, I cannot
thank you enough for for highlighting this we had that UCLA report last week we're dialing into it a
little bit more. Bob: Yeah and I wanna and I wanna make sure falconcares.org if you wanna help Cerritos
College specifically and their outreach and the homeless uh students here in the Norwalk area
you can help out. Michaela: I love that I just wrote it down myself because I think all of us who are feeling
that we're you know have the blessings that we can share wanna wanna do what we can to help our
our kiddos out. Thanks Bob, we appreciate you and your good heart and your good hard work.