New UCLA research finds student homelessness has intensified across California, with the crisis affecting attendance, academic performance and graduation rates.
Nearly 300,000 California students experienced homelessness during the 2024 to 25 school year, marking a new high and underscoring what researchers at UCLA describe as a deepening crisis for children and families across the state.
The number reached 298,254 students, according to the California Department of Education, while new research from the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools finds that student homelessness has increased by about 10 percent since 2018 to 19.
The findings are detailed in UCLA’s new report, “State of Crisis 2026: A Deepening Crisis of Students Experiencing Homelessness Across California.” The report examines eight years of California education data and looks at how housing instability intersects with attendance, academic achievement, graduation, and college-going.
The numbers challenge one of the most common images of homelessness.
For most students identified as experiencing homelessness in California, there is no shelter bed or sidewalk involved.
In 2024 to 25, 83.8 percent were temporarily doubled up with another family or household, according to state data. Another 6.7 percent were living in temporary shelters, 5.6 percent were staying in hotels or motels and 3.9 percent were temporarily unsheltered.
That means a student experiencing homelessness may still have a place to sleep every night, but that place may be crowded, temporary or dependent on another family’s willingness to provide shelter.
For children, that instability can have consequences inside the classroom.
UCLA researchers found that students experiencing homelessness continue to lag behind their housed classmates across the educational measures examined, including attendance, suspensions, academic performance, graduation, and college-going.
California’s own data show the same troubling pattern.
In 2024 to 25, the chronic absenteeism rate for students experiencing homelessness was higher than the statewide rate, while homeless students also performed substantially below statewide averages in English language arts and mathematics.
The graduation gap is also significant.
About 77 percent of students experiencing homelessness graduated from high school within four years in 2024 to 25, compared with approximately 88 percent of students statewide.
The problem is not distributed evenly across California.
UCLA found that Southern California contains seven of the 10 school districts with the highest numbers of students experiencing homelessness.
At the same time, Northern California and the Central Coast contain many of the counties and school districts with the highest rates when homelessness is measured against the size of the student population.
The racial disparities are particularly stark.
UCLA researchers found that Black and American Indian and Alaska Native students have consistently experienced the highest and fastest-growing rates of homelessness in California.
In 2024 to 25, approximately one in 12 Black students and one in 12 American Indian or Alaska Native students experienced homelessness, according to the UCLA research.
The crisis also has major implications for Latino families.
Latino students represent a large share of California’s public school population and account for a substantial portion of students identified as experiencing homelessness.
For schools, identifying those students can be difficult because housing instability often remains invisible.
A child may arrive at school clean, have a backpack and appear to have a stable home life while living temporarily with relatives or friends because the family’s previous housing became unaffordable.
California’s education system relies on schools and districts to identify students who meet the federal definition of homelessness. The state says its figures come from annual data submitted by local education agencies and include students who were reported as experiencing homelessness at some point during the school year.
That means the numbers should be understood as identified students, not necessarily every child experiencing housing instability.
The latest state data show how quickly the number has grown.
California recorded 224,191 students experiencing homelessness in 2021 to 22, rising to 246,480 in 2022 to 23, 286,853 in 2023 to 24 and finally 298,254 in 2024 to 25.
The increase comes as California has made new investments to help students without stable housing.
The UCLA researchers point to a recent $116 million one-time state allocation to identify and support students experiencing homelessness.
But researchers say funding alone will not solve the problem.
Grace Kim, a research analyst at UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools and the report’s lead author, said the findings show that student homelessness is not simply a housing problem.
It is also an educational and developmental crisis.
The consequences can follow students for years.
A child who moves repeatedly may change schools, lose contact with teachers, miss classes or struggle to complete assignments without reliable access to transportation, technology or a quiet place to study.
Older students face another challenge.
State data show that the number of homeless unaccompanied youth increases during the high school years, reaching 3,208 students in 12th grade in 2024 to 25.
For California schools, the challenge is therefore bigger than simply getting students into classrooms.
Schools have to identify when a student is struggling with housing instability, connect families with available services and help students remain engaged academically while their living situation changes.
The new UCLA report puts a number on the scale of that challenge.
298,254 students identified in one school year.
And the majority were not living on the streets.
They were children trying to go to school while their families were temporarily living with someone else, staying in a motel, moving between shelters or facing another form of unstable housing.
The number tells only part of the story.
The more difficult question is how many children are experiencing housing instability without ever being identified.
For California schools, nearly 300,000 students is not simply a homelessness statistic. It is a warning about how housing instability is shaping the education of an entire generation.
