📣 Open Letter to College & University Students

Dear Students,

Every generation faces a defining crisis. For ours, it is the housing and homelessness emergency — and it is happening now, on our streets, in our classrooms, and in the lives of classmates who are struggling to find a safe place to sleep. 🏘️💔

Many of you are juggling classes, jobs, rent, and the stress of unstable housing. Some are couch-surfing, living in cars, or relying on food banks while trying to keep up with studies. This is not a private hardship — it is a systemic crisis that affects mental health, academic success, and future opportunity.

We ask you to act. Encourage your instructors, departments, and student unions to turn the focus of coursework, research, and projects toward housing justice and homelessness solutions. If tuition pays for learning and research, why not direct that investment toward real, practical change?

• Can your assignments or group projects address local housing issues? 📝
• Can classes partner with community organizations supporting people without housing? 🤝
• Can your student union push the university to fund practical, on-campus solutions (tiny homes pilot projects, emergency student housing funds, applied research collaborations)? 🏗️

Imagine architecture studios designing affordable prototype housing. Imagine engineering courses building low-cost, energy-efficient shelter models. Imagine social work, public health, economics, and law students testing policies and offering real assistance. Your classroom can be a lab for change — not just a place to write papers.

You are paying tuition to learn. Let that investment do double duty: educate you and help the communities you live in. If we fail to solve the housing crisis, every other goal — climate action, health equity, economic fairness — becomes harder to reach.

The time to act is now. Start conversations in lectures, seminars, clubs, and student government. Demand that housing justice becomes a cornerstone of campus learning. Together, students can turn campuses into engines of hope, fairness, and lasting change. ✊🏽🏫🌍

In solidarity,
Tina Winterlik
aka Zipolita 💜