They go without food, and double up and triple up in rooms that they rent. And though homelessness is more prevalent among undergrad students, it also happens to a lot of grad student workers too.
But I'm curious if that is a self imposed condition because they simply can't rent exactly where they want to.
As an example, there was a googler famously living out of a moving truck, because he wanted a short commute and couldn't live right next to the campus in MTV. That was his choice, I don't think anyone would argue google doesn't pay people enough to afford rent.
How many hours of commuting a day amounts to living "exactly where you want to"?
If you can save $1000/month in rent by adding 200 hours of commute, why is that OK? And once you add in the extra thousands of miles of car travel, and having to pay for a car rather than being able to bike or take a bus, and it doesn't actually save any money...
Here are the estimated costs of living for various campuses, by three different methodologies:
The highest cost of living is where there's no escape to cheap housing by adding long commutes.
The people running these towns with high cost of living could add plenty of more housing, enough to reduce the cost of living, but have been spoiled brats about it. The level of entitlement among homeowners about not even seeing an apartment is absolutely astounding.
Homelessness is far higher than a rounding error, it's 5% of UC students, 10% of CSU students, and 20% of community college students.
I live in a town with a UC campus, and come across packs of students living in their cars. They do everything they can to have minimal impact and hide from view. It makes me terribly sad, and shocked every time I see it.
Hey, that's where I live! Locally, the degrowth community from the 70s has allied with more conservative locals to stop all housing and maintain a firmly anti-university stance that prevents the building of dorms, of housing, and even results in ridiculous stances like trying to cut down on bus service since students use the buses a lot (and therefore cut down on traffic a lot).
I fight as hard as I can against the people causing all the suffering amongst those who aren't super wealthy, but their ability to understand other humans can not see beyond the comfort of their own yards. In contrast, they complain viciously about a building that they can see. A very strange sort of sight.
As an example, there was a googler famously living out of a moving truck, because he wanted a short commute and couldn't live right next to the campus in MTV. That was his choice, I don't think anyone would argue google doesn't pay people enough to afford rent.