Boston City Councilors and nonprofit leaders gathered last month to address ways to connect with more Boston Public Schools students who are experiencing homelessness.
“Our families should not have to wait for policy or the government to figure out how to help them,’’ said Cory McCarthy, chief of students for BPS, at the hearing last month. “We have to be proactive and ready.”
The school district reported that 5,405 students experienced homelessness in the 2024-25 academic year and projects the number will increase this year. More than 10 percent of the total student population currently experience homelessness, according to data revealed at the council hearing.
Data also show that more than 33,679 students of Massachusetts public schools are homeless, according to the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
But roughly one of every six homeless students in the entire state are in a Boston public school classroom, said Brandy Brooks, executive director of Boston Higher Ground, a nonprofit that serves unhoused BPS students and their families.
The hearing was held Sept. 17 at City Hall by Councilor Benjamin Weber, whose district includes parts of Jamaica Plain and Mission Hill. A panel of advocates for homeless students, such as representatives from Boston Higher Ground and the Boston College School of Social Work and Family Aid spoke at the hearing.
Weber used data to paint a troubling picture of the state of unhoused BPS students. He said many are “lacking fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.”
They live in shelters, “in places not meant for human sleeping” because they have no other alternative or adequate option, said Weber, who noted that many unhoused students exist under financial duress.
The advocates at the hearing said that unhoused students don’t identify as homeless because they are often couch-surfing with various relatives or staying with different friends. Some students are too young to realize they are in a crisis.
“How many others do we not know about? That are doubled up or they’re couch surfing,’’ Brooks said. “So I look at it as, [this] is everyone’s problem.”
Jess McCabe Johnson, director of BC’s Family Housing Hardship Program, said families who are experiencing housing disruption are focused on meeting their basic needs.
“Sometimes there’s a fear of reporting one’s housing status,” she said.
McCabe and other researchers are currently testing a detection tool called “homelessness risk screener” that will help identify students and families with imminent housing difficulties.
BPS has had a landmark housing stability initiative called the Emergency Homelessness Intervention Program that has provided stable housing support for more than 2,000 BPS families and prevented more than 1,000 BPS families from becoming homeless since 2020, according to the council.
Nonprofit officials at the hearing also noted they have lost critical grant funding to support families on the brink of homelessness and urged further support.
The councilors said they want to bring back a committee of nonprofit leaders, city officials and school leaders to regularly pursue strategies for helping unhoused students.
“I think this hearing… is the start of a conversation,” Brooks said, “and so now it’s kind of following up and continuing to advocate, and in some parts, pressure” people to do the right thing.