Students at the University of California, Los Angeles are set to open a homeless shelter for local students this fall.

Bruin Shelter, a nonprofit shelter, will house eight students starting Oct. 16. According to a survey conducted by FAFSA, more than 58,000 college students indicated that they were homeless in some way in 2012.

The shelter can house nine students, but one student found permanent housing prior to opening, said Bruin Shelter’s media director Rebecca Sarvady said. Bruin Shelter is the second student-run homeless shelter in the United States, following the Y2Y homeless shelter started by students at Harvard University.

Sarvady said Bruin Shelter was directly inspired by the Y2Y shelter.

Imesh Samarakoon, the internal vice president, said it was due to Harvard’s pioneering work that they were able to do this.

“We were fascinated by the fact that they were able to pull it off and surprised that no other university really had any successes after that,” Samarakoon said. “We were surprised that there weren’t homeless shelters in every college campus.”

The primary goal of Bruin Shelter is to get students their degrees and to get them out of homelessness, Samarakoon said.

“We’re trying to bring awareness to homelessness on college campuses because I know it’s not something people pay attention to or even realize is a major problem,” Samarakoon said.

Bruin Shelter is a non-gender-specific housing facility, Sarvady said. Residents of the shelter are housed in two separate rooms, one room for residents who identify as male and the other for residents who identify as female, Samarakoon said.

Sarvady said the shelter also has a recreational room with a TV and a quiet space where residents can study. Residents can take advantage of a larger recreational room as well.

Residents of Bruin Shelter have access to a bed every night, two meals per day, medical and mental health checkups and career counseling, Sarvady said. Residents are allowed to stay for however long they need to during the six-month season.

Reverend Eric Shafer, a board member for the shelter and senior pastor at Mount Olive Lutheran Church in Santa Monica, California, said the impact on the surrounding neighborhood will be “negligible,” considering that the shelter is not the kind to have a line wrapping around the block with people waiting to get in every day.

But he added that it could have a large impact across the country.

“We have a chance here to make an impact far beyond the west side of Los Angeles and UCLA and Santa Monica College by setting an example that can be duplicated across the country,” he said.

The shelter is available to students in the Los Angeles area, but the shelter did outreach at UCLA, Santa Monica College and Loyola Marymount University, Sarvady said.

Bruin Shelter initially received the majority of its financial support from UCLA, but now gets most of its funding from a nonprofit incubator called Community Partners, Samarakoon said. Through Community Partners, the shelter can apply for funding from other foundations to support day-to-day activities at the shelter.

Samarakoon said if this first season goes well, he and other officials will consider expanding the shelter. The shelter is grateful for the help it’s received from Mt. Olive Lutheran Church, he said but they hope to move the shelter to a building in Westwood, an area close to UCLA.

After opening for the season, Samarakoon said Bruin Shelter will release all of its documentation regarding how the shelter operates, including policy guides, so other students can replicate Bruin Shelter’s model at their own colleges. The documentation will also show how Bruin Shelter got community partners, university support and how it became a nonprofit.

It can take many years to get a nonprofit shelter started, but through collaborating with groups throughout the city as well as with student homelessness groups at UCLA, the team for Bruin Shelter procured a shelter space in less than two years, Sarvady said.

“The city wants to be supportive of this, so we’re really pleased about that,” Shafer said.

Published on October 5, 2016 at 9:28 pm

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