Students Keep a Roof Over Each Other’s Heads

Even with a job and financial aid, some college students can’t afford a place to live.

Faced with that dilemma, undergraduates at the University of California, Davis founded Aggie House in 2021 for their schoolmates facing housing insecurity. “I think sometimes, in general shelters, it can be harder for people to understand what a student is going through,” Hayven Angelique Pfister, a fourth-year human biology major and the external co-president of Aggie House, told Reasons to Be Cheerful. “It’s easier (and) more comfortable,” she added, because every resident and volunteer is also a student.

Aggie House, a collection of low-rent apartments, is modeled on two older student-run shelters in Los Angeles: UCLA’s Bruin Shelter, which opened in 2016 as the nation’s first shelter for homeless college students, and USC’s Trojan Shelter. Only UC Davis students are eligible for Aggie House, and each potential resident is vetted for need through an application and interview. Many are referred by the university’s basic-needs center.

Residents can stay up to a year, with rent starting at $200 to $300 a month — roughly 90% less than the average rent in Davis. Rent then rises $50 each month to encourage residents to move toward permanent housing. Like its predecessors, Aggie House is built on the simple premise that no student should be left without a place to live.