The Basic Needs Center provides housing services and resources to help alleviate housing insecurity in the UC Berkeley student community. Our service model includes prevention services to support students from losing their housing and emergency services to support students who are unhoused or at imminent risk of losing their housing.
We understand that housing insecurity and its most extreme experience of houselessness are not isolated challenges. We want to acknowledge the direct and often compound impacts that housing insecurity has on students’ mental and physical health, academic achievement and progress, and overall sense of belonging. It can be overwhelming to focus on academics without having secured housing.
We define housing insecurity as the following circumstances :
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unhoused
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couchsurfing
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living in a vehicle
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staying in an overcrowded room/home
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commuting a significant distance
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dealing with habitability issues (lack of heat or water, mold, no windows, unable to meet accessibility needs)
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experiencing safety concerns
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have been scammed/defrauded
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working multiple jobs to afford a deposit/rent
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simply unable to locate affordable housing that meets basic needs