Secure housing has become an issue that has been on the forefront of everyone’s minds during the in the last couple of years. With housing insecurity becoming more of an issue, it has left few people of the Tacoma community unfazed. It’s also an issue many college and university students are tackling with limited resources. If you haven’t heard already our ASTCC Student Government has started the year aiming to help provide a remedy for students facing housing insecurity.

 

The main aim of the ASTCC’s Washington State Student Housing Initiative, it’s first bill this academic year is to help resurrect and seek funding for the CHAP program which lost most of its momentum during the course of the Covid-19 pandemic causing a serious back log of applicants. This has already forced what was already a long waiting list to find affordable housing for Tacoma's college students on an even longer waiting list as case workers' workloads piled up. The CHAP program which is a program run in partnership between THA, Tacoma Community College and the University of Washington at Tacoma helps to provide rental assistance to homeless and near homeless college students. Unfortunately, there are plans to scrap CHAP as it's being viewed as inequitable to Tacoma residents in general who are also experiencing housing insecurity. 

 

Yet the purpose and mission of CHAP itself is to assist college students where they would be hard pressed to find help else where. In speaking with our ASTCC President Madeline Sprute, she highlighted that point and her hopes of what this bill will do specifically for students not only here at TCC and within WA State, but also as a conversation starter in other parts of the US where college students are experiencing the same problems.

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