This is MESS:
Here’s I had to spell out for Columbia Housing:
Below is an email that I sent to Columbia’s Housing after hours and hours painstaking labor with government bodies (the HRA) — all to try to figure out how to stay in school and homed.
Quick aside: I’ve also created a GoFundMe [linked here] to put towards housing and living expenses, and their insane backlog of rent. Please share, and anything you can do will leave me grateful.
Okay back to the mess. Here we go:
Hello [name]!
I hope you are well. Thank you so much for your response.
I also appreciate the confirmation of what you can provide and the timeframe regarding when to expect it. I'm counting down the days of still having a home, so I really appreciate your understanding of the urgency surrounding this.
Additionally, I fully understand that you are not HRA guides or experts – but sadly I don't even think those even exist at the HRA.
I am sharing this with you, apart from my own situation, to try to be as much of a liaison as I can between concerned students and housing at Columbia. And if you're noticing an influx of these requests, to me, that says that more students being admitted who cannot afford housing without governmental support, and the government is making is more challenging for those already admitted to continue staying homed.
Further, if that increase of requests has been isolated to this the last year, my guess is that it's a combination of the "Beautiful Big Mess" and Mamdani's efforts to make the city affordable, polarizing the housing landscape – which forebodes that there is more to come.
Here are some new hurdles that I crashed through in my most recent endeavors with the HRA that I think you should know of:
The first step to receiving benefits or signing a new job always requires a statement verifying you have an address.
That is always going to be requested, and the information shared on that document could potentially be auto-generated for Columbia students seeking aid or employment, removing the burden from your office
Nevertheless a point-person would've been helpful
I requested that documentation when I moved-in in January, and did not receive a response from Columbia’s [Housing Department] after being shuffled around between TC Housing, GS Housing, and your office.
This week, I discovered that this negatively affected my ability to maintain my current federal aid of Food Stamps, Medicaid, and EBT Cash for my medical supplies
Trump created a federal policy where you "have to work if you want benefits" and so there's an 80-hour work requirement every month, and those hours need to be shared to and verified by the HRA
This could considered "reasonable" if the job market were equally receptive, but that is not the case and simply means: people are going to lose their benefits.
Some of those will be Columbia students.
Fortunately, being in school can count to those 80-hours a month
Unfortunately, since my requests for confirmation of tenancy would've helped verify I was a student were never answered, I now have a strike against me that cannot be retroactively removed
This requirement went into affect in March (Big Beautiful Bill), so I am showing 4 months of being "non-compliant"
Nowhere was this significant update to what has kept me alive ever shared with me.
If it was mailed, I've had issues with mail being accessible, but
often the state/federal aid does not send out updates to your case
Again, I know this isn't your specialty, which is why I am taking the time to share all that I am learning of the new policies, and, moreover, sharing my predictions on how I think this will affect students in the near-future.
If Trump's actions are going to make it harder for those without wealth to exist, there are going to be more and more requirements of those who rely on benefits.
Those requirements will always begin with proving you have a home.
My recommendation, if I may be so bold, is that preparing an easily generated and accessible housing document for those seeking benefits will make it easier for you as the demand increases, and faster for the students juggling school at an Ivy League with the near-doctorate needed to navigate "the system."
Based on my own experiences, it never gets easier:
The HRA will never consolidate departments or increase the visibility and communication between them; if anything the difficulty is deliberate so fewer people will have the strength to apply.
Columbia University has limitations, of course, but part of what I am/was hoping to do here is find the areas in which systems can be built to help those students that are ailing. I am trying to advocate for all of us.
I hope this can help prepare at least the scaffolding for these changes that mirror the needs of your students and the political climate.
It took me 6 months of me constantly trying to find anyone to connect with over my concerns before finally connecting with you, and not everyone is has that same tenacity/desperation.
I hope that in sharing my experiences, you can recognize this as me revealing the conditions facing other Columbia students, rather than seeing my case that is an exception.
Thank you for your help and time,
Sage