Raleigh Nonprofit Tests Short-Term Homestay Model to Combat College Student Homelessness

In the winter of 2023, Kaleb H. was pursuing a degree in environmental science full-time at NC State University and working five part-time jobs when they lost their housing.

Kaleb, who asked to be identified by their first name and last initial, was growing some plants inside their family home and one had begun to rot and smell.

“I got home from work, my mom started making a big issue about these plants, and she pretty much kicked me out over that at midnight,” Kaleb explains. 

Their home life was challenging for a long time, Kaleb says. But this was still unexpected. In the middle of the semester, juggling several jobs, they suddenly had no stable housing.

Kaleb was one of more than 5,000 students at NC State experiencing homelessness at some point in 2023. NC State professor emeritus Mary Haskett authored a new report that found 14 percent of the 38,000-plus student population experienced homelessness and 30 percent experienced food insecurity that year. 

Haskett also co-founded the Raleigh-based nonprofit Housing Options for Students Today (HOST). The program places students who need temporary housing into free homestays for up to six months and supports students in securing long-term, independent housing. 

Before retiring in January, Haskett researched and taught in the university’s Department of Psychology with a focus on family homelessness. She became interested in college students’ housing security after realizing a student on her undergraduate research team didn’t have stable housing.

“I had a student disappear from the work, and my initial response was frustration: ‘Where is he? He’s being irresponsible,’” Haskett says. “I found out later he was living in his car. That was a wake-up call, one of those forehead slap moments.”

Haskett surveyed NC State graduate and undergraduate students about housing and food security in 2017. She found 15 percent of the student body was food insecure and 9.5 percent had experienced some form of homelessness in the past year—whether they were couch surfing, living outside, in a shelter, or in other temporary housing. 

Haskett and her team repeated the survey in 2020 and 2023. Each time, food insecurity rates increased. Homelessness remained fixed at 14 percent from 2020 to 2023. 

Haskett’s newest report found, unsurprisingly, that housing and food insecurity worsen college students’ overall well-being, chronic stressors that impact their ability to focus on courses. She says it’s a vicious cycle.

“Grades start slipping, and then students may lose their scholarship, which impacts their finances again,” Hasket says. “It impacts sleep, concentration, decision-making, and problem-solving. Sometimes students don’t make what we consider the best choices because they are operating at a fundamental survival level.”

Haskett co-founded HOST with a group of Triangle social workers, higher education professionals, and health care providers. The program vets potential host families and trains them on trauma-informed care, mental health awareness, diversity, inclusion, and cultural competency. Students may meet with potential hosts multiple times before moving in, to ensure it’s a good fit for everyone.

Libby Stephens, HOST’s program coordinator, says hosts and students discuss their expectations for the housing situation and create a document together outlining needs and boundaries. 

“We are there to provide a lot of support for the hosts and students during the process,” Stephens says.

Since it launched in 2022, HOST has worked with about 50 students around Wake County, placing nine into homestays and providing financial assistance to others to find or maintain stable housing. HOST keeps tabs on the students, tracking their well-being and degree progress even after they exit the program. 

Over time, students have reported lower stress, greater ability to focus on their courses, and greater overall well-being. Haskett and Stephens say all of the student/host pairings have been successful, and all students found stable housing after their homestay.

The HOST homestay program

In spring 2022, Jabson Aloma was midway through a mechanical engineering degree at NC State, living with roommates in a four-bedroom apartment near campus, and driving to his part-time job at the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants’ Raleigh field office. Aloma immigrated from the Congo in 2018 and provided translation support and financial literacy coaching to recent immigrants.

When his car broke down in April—right before finals—Aloma couldn’t get to work and lost his income source. Then his landlords announced they planned to raise his rent.

Aloma became the first student to find a temporary homestay through HOST. He moved in with Carrie Dow-Smith, the current chair of HOST’s all-volunteer board of directors, and her husband, Vincent Smith, and stayed with them for six months.

“It was a life-saving opportunity,” Aloma says. He used the time to save money, and HOST’s student housing advocate, Alden Hearn, helped him secure on-campus housing for the following semester. 

Aloma found the Dow-Smiths to be warm and kind. Carrie Dow-Smith, a pediatrician at WakeMed with three adult children, “basically considered me like her child,” Aloma says. He didn’t have any family living in the U.S., so he began listing Dow-Smith as his emergency contact. 

Kaleb H. also found temporary housing with HOST after learning about the program through a professor. In spring 2023, they moved in with Sarah and Chris Wyne, a retired couple with grown children and plenty of space in their empty nest. 

A lover of plants and gardening, Kaleb speaks in botanic metaphors to describe their HOST experience.

“​​When I was at my parents’ house, I never flowered,” Kaleb says. “I just had my low-lying leaves, and got mistaken as a dandelion and pulled and thrown.” 

But Kaleb isn’t a dandelion. They’re a purple coneflower. 

“Purple coneflower has low-lying leaves that people mistake as weeds, and then … out emerges beautiful purple flowers that rise above the ground,” Kaleb says. With the Wynes, “I lived with experienced gardeners who saw my low-lying leaves for what they were and nurtured me.”

Kaleb spent four months with the Wynes while Hearn helped them search for long-term housing. One of Kaleb’s non-negotiables was to cultivate a garden in the next place they lived.

Kaleb found a house close to campus and their part-time jobs. They’ve been living there for about a year, and in the front yard, planted a garden with corn, beans, squash, strawberries, zucchini, and sunflowers.

“It’s all ripening right now … it’s very symbolic,” Kaleb reflects. “Last year, I planted the garden out of hunger … And [now] I am here marking one year of being in this house.”

The Wynes also hosted Shaw University student Kendra F. and her teenage son, Quincy, in early 2023. 

Kendra learned about HOST at a moment when she was feeling afraid and needed extra support, she says. She was laid off and sleeping on her niece’s couch. The Wynes offered her and Quincy comfortable beds, and HOST helped her find an apartment once she’d saved enough money at her new job.

“Exiting the Wynes’ home was bittersweet,” Kendra recalls. “We did have a moment where we huddled and hugged and shed tears. But it was tears of joy.”

Kendra, Kaleb, and Aloma each say homelessness is often invisible and hard to talk about, making it that much more difficult to seek help. 

“None of my co-workers at that time were aware that I had become homeless. That’s just not something I share,” Kendra says.

It’s the same on a college campus, Aloma says. 

“It’s something that you wouldn’t notice unless you have a close friend who tells you about the situation.”

More work to be done

HOST has had small-scale success providing care and stability, but Haskett knows HOST’s services aren’t one-size-fits-all solutions for housing-insecure students. Meaningfully attacking student homelessness in Wake County will require upstream investments that target students before they reach that point of immediate need. 

“We used to picture a college campus as being in a bubble, its own little world. And that’s just not the case,” Haskett says. 

Students, like everyone else, have to contend with Raleigh’s rising cost of living paired with a stagnant $7.25-per-hour minimum wage. Tuition is also increasing at area colleges (although not in the UNC system), and affordable housing options near campuses are dwindling.

With these forces at play, Haskett says the onus should be on colleges and universities to help their neediest students.

While HOST serves students at any Wake County college or university, Haskett’s research deals primarily with NC State. In her report, Haskett recommends NC State designate a vice chancellor to increase food and housing security; create more student housing to match enrollment growth; help eligible students apply for SNAP benefits; conduct a salary study of student workers; reassess the freshman residency requirement to free up space for housing-insecure upperclassmen; and invest in partnerships with local affordable housing and basic needs initiatives.

NC State has some resources available for housing- and food-insecure students through its Pack Essentials program. Mick Kulikowski, NC State’s director of strategic communications and media relations, says the on-campus Pack Essentials Hub offers a food pantry, donation distributions, and student emergency grants.

“NC State continues expanding its essential services to meet student needs,” Kulikowski wrote in an email, adding that the university recently established an e Office for Student Life and Advocacy.

But Haskett sees these investments and sees that they haven’t made a dent in the housing and food insecurity data she collects.

“That’s why we’re called Housing Options for Students Today,” she says. “We’re not exclusively thinking about being a host home program, but we do want to test that model, determine whether this can be an effective approach.”

Hosts wanted

Stephens, HOST’s program coordinator, knows HOST’s capacity to serve students is small but the problem is big. 

She says if too many students learn about HOST, “we’d be flooded.” Instead of advertising widely, the program usually connects with students through referrals from on-campus faculty and staff. 

Demand for homestays still far exceeds HOST’s current supply. Stephens and Haskett are searching for volunteers with spare rooms, willing to host students for a short time.

Hosts can be homeowners or renters if their rental agreements allow long-term guests. They must provide a furnished private bedroom and bathroom and kitchen access including storage in the refrigerator, freezer, and pantry. Hosts aren’t required to provide transportation or meals. They set their own availability. HOST also offers a small stipend to offset utility costs. 

For the Wynes, hosting Kaleb, then Kendra and Quincy, was a no-brainer. Sarah Wyne is the kind of person who brings strangers home from the airport to sleep in her spare room when their flights get delayed. When she found out about HOST, she and Chris quickly agreed: we have the space, let’s do it. 

“There’s a normal reluctance to change when you get to a certain stage in your life,” Chris Wyne reflects. “This is an opportunity to—on a short-term basis—meet a need of someone else, and make a new friend. I regard the three individuals that we’ve had in our home as [people] that we’ll know forever.”

Reach Reporter Chloe Courtney Bohl at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].