The Oregon Senate on Monday passed a bill that would require the state’s public colleges to hire “benefits navigators” — a measure that advocates said would be key in fighting food and housing insecurity on campus.
According to the legislation, House Bill 2835, which passed the Oregon House last week, the benefits navigators would help students at the state’s 26 public colleges and universities determine their eligibility for and apply for assistance from programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The measure would allocate nearly $5 million for the new positions. The bill does not specify when the navigators would be hired, but the funding is intended to last the next two years.
The bill now goes to Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, who has not yet taken a position on it.
In a 2019 survey of Oregon community-college students, 41 percent of respondents said they had been food insecure in the previous 30 days, 52 percent said they had been housing insecure in the previous year, and 20 percent said they had been homeless in the previous year. The survey, conducted by the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, which researches college students’ basic needs and advocates for better access to them, found that most Oregon community-college students who experienced basic-needs insecurity did not get access to assistance — for example, less than a third of food-insecure students received SNAP benefits. Use of on-campus resources was similarly low, with less than quarter of food-insecure students getting help from a food pantry.
Several community and student organizations united to push for the bill after it was introduced, in January. Among them were Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon, the Oregon Community College Association, and the Oregon Students Association.
“The goal of this bill was to really make sure that when we encourage a student at any age to come to college, that institutions are prepared and have dedicated funding to helping the whole person succeed,” said Emma D.R. Kallaway, government-relations director at Portland Community College.
Chloe E.R. Eberhardt, a policy advocate at Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon, said benefits navigators are important because students really need someone to “take time with them that maybe others wouldn’t,” when they’re bombarded with information about all the benefits available to them.
“What we heard from students was that if you know someone who knows something, you might get connected to a particular resource,” Eberhardt said. “If you don’t know that person, then you won’t get connected.”
For many of the organizers, the fight for the bill was personal. Emily L. Wanous, legislative director of the Oregon Students Association, said she graduated from Western Oregon University in 2018 as a low-income, first-generation student. She had chosen that university, she said, because it was the cheapest state college in Oregon.
“We’ve always known that there is this type of thing on campuses, this rite of passage that our parents would tell us … ‘Oh, you’re gonna survive on ramen, and it’s OK,’” she said. “But it’s a different world now, and college just costs so much more, and so much more is at stake than it was when it was much more affordable.”
A policy-tracking tool from the Education Commission of the States shows that eight other state legislatures have passed bills this year that relate to nutrition and education. In May, Maryland enacted a law to establish the “hunger-free campus program,” to bolster efforts to reduce food insecurity at colleges and universities across the state. The law takes effect on October 1.
“I just really hope that other states who recognize this is an issue — because we know this is an issue nationwide — that they really grab ahold of this and see it as an example, to ensure that we’re able to protect students,” Wanous said. “Not just in Oregon but nationwide.”
