Rey Lopez, a 25-year-old Asian American Studies major shares his personal experience with homelessness. Lopez and other community members discuss the current state of homelessness on campus and examine how the school supports these students.
Student homelessness at SF State
Rey Lopez,, a 25-year-old Asian American Studies major, gets ready to sleep in his car. Because Lopez is currently homeless, he spends his nights either couch surfing with friends or sleeping in his car.
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Alessa • Dec 21, 2016 at 8:55 am
Once he graduates, he’s going to complain that he cannot find a good job. What are you going to do with that degree?
Aaron Goodman • Dec 7, 2016 at 9:19 pm
Please do connect to other organizations and community groups on the issue of Housing in D7 and the impacts of SFSU-CSU on the housing situation. Part of the concerns stem from the CSU-SFSU masterplan and growth that has occurred without adequately solving for the loss of rental housing stock in the district. Stonestown (UPN) and Parkmerced (UPS) purchases and a connection to flipping of the housing stock at Parkmerced led to older SFSU-Xpress articles in the journalism department on “student living redefined” and the loss of affordable low-income rental housing that existed prior to the predatory investment strategies of the future developers and owners in Parkmerced. Currently the solution is not just allowing SFSU-CSU to build market rate student rental dorms in the UPS/UPN areas, but to comprehend how housing issues require a more drastic solution “on-campus” on housing development adjacent to 19th Ave, and the future steps needed for low-income infill housing as a more sustainable solution on campus, and adjacent at Stonestowns empty parking lots. I hope that the Co-Chair and others on the Ad-Hoc Working Advisory Committee have open enough ears to discuss the other aspects of displacement and gentrification that has occurred on campus and off, due to the SFSU-CSU expansionism, and lacking vision in their prior masterplan in terms of transportation, and housing development for the pressures they created.
There are solutions but they require rethinking and retooling what projects and proposals are on the boards at the CSU-SFSU Master-Plan and making sure that the CSU Capital Planners are forced to think in bigger terms of how and where to place future housing and its integration and infrastructure support to solve the housing concerns that are occurring still daily in the borders to campus.