Overview

  • Invitations to complete the questionnaire were sent by email to 14954 students from Metropolitan Community College, and 877 students completed it. Thus, the response rate was about 5.9%
  • In the last year, about 11% of students experienced some form of homelessness, 44% were housing insecure, and 38% had low or very low food security.
  • About 55% of students at Metropolitan Community College experienced at least one of these forms of basic needs insecurity in the past year. About 6.5% experienced all three forms of basic needs insecurity.
  • The prevalence of basic needs insecurity are presented for several demographic subgroups.

Basic Needs for All Students

Housing Insecurity

Housing insecurity can involve unaffordable housing, poor housing quality, crowding, and frequent moves (Cutts et al., 2011). The survey instrument included six items to assess whether a student has experienced housing insecurity in the past thirty days and in the past twelve months. Students are classified as housing insecure if they answered affirmatively to at least one of those items for the time period in question.

How prevalent is housing insecurity at Metropolitan Community College? As can be seen in the plot below, 32% were housing insecure in the month they were surveyed and 44% were housing insecure in the previous year.

Homelessness

Homelessness indicates that a person is without a place to live, often residing in a shelter, automobile, an abandoned building, or outside. The survey included five items to determine whether students have been homeless in the past thirty days and in the past twelve months. Students are considered homeless if they answered affirmatively to at least one of five items for the time period in question. Note that it is possible for students to have experienced both homelessness and housing insecurity at different times during the previous month or year.

How prevalent is homelessness at Metropolitan Community College? As can be seen in the plot below, 4.8% were homeless in the month they were surveyed and 11% were homeless at some point in the previous year.

Food Security

Food insecurity is the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or the ability to acquire such foods in a socially acceptable manner (Anderson, 1990). To assess food insecurity among students, the survey instrument included the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) 10-item U.S. Adult Food Security Survey Module (FSSM). The module asks students about their experiences in the past thirty days.

What percentage of students at Metropolitan Community College endorsed each food insecurity item?

The USDA recommends assigning each respondent a score based on the total number of affirmative answers on the 10-item instrument. That score determines a person’s food security status via a four category scale, where a score of zero corresponds to high food security, one to marginal food security, two to four translate to low food security, and scores of five or six indicate very low food security. Taken together, people who report low and very low food security can be referred to as food insecure.

Food Security Categories
Items Endorsed Food Security Level Classification
0 High Food Secure
1–2 Marginal
3–4 Low Food Insecure
6–10 Very Low

How prevalent is food insecurity at Metropolitan Community College? As seen in the plot below, 38% of students were food insecure (i.e., had low or very low food insecurity).

Comparisons with Other Schools

In the fall of 2017, the Wisconsin HOPE Lab collected data from 13,631 students attending 33 different two-year communitiy colleges.

Basic Needs Insecurity Overlap

Homelessness, Housing Insecurity, and Food Insecurity are overlapping concerns, with about 55% of students at Metropolitan Community College experiencing at least one of these forms of basic needs insecurity in the past year.

Note This plot only used cases in which participants provided complete data for the food insecurity, housing insecurity, and homelessness. Thus, because some participants did not answer all of the questions on the questionnaire, percentages in this plot may differ slightly from other estimates when only one variable was considered at a time.

Basic Needs by Subgroups

The tables and figures in this section present measures of food insecurity, housing insecurity, and homelessness for various demographic groups. In this section, any category with fewer than 25 participants was removed from any plots in which it might otherwise have appeared.

Gender

How does each student self-identify?

Note: The term Non-Binary is used here to refer to a wide range of gender identities including transsexual, gender fluid, third gender, and many others.

Gender n Percent
Male 255 29.1%
Female 602 68.6%
Non-Binary 20 2.3%

Housing Insecurity by Gender

Homelessness by Gender

Food Insecurity by Gender

Food Security Questions

Food Insecurity Categories

Sexual Orientation

How does each student self-identify?

Sexual Orientation n Percent
Heterosexual 732 84.7%
Homosexual 28 3.2%
Bisexual 70 8.1%
None 34 3.9%

Housing Insecurity by Sexual Orientation

Homelessness by Sexual Orientation

Food Insecurity by Sexual Orientation

Food Security Questions

Food Insecurity Categories

Race/Ethnicity

How does each student self-identify?

Note: All groups with fewer than 25 participants were combined into the Other category, which also includes individuals who identified as belonging to more than one racial/ethnic group.

Race/Ethnicity n Percent
Black 88 10.1%
Native American 6 0.7%
Hispanic 86 9.9%
Middle-Eastern/Arab 1 0.1%
Asian 39 4.5%
White 548 62.8%
Mixed/Other 104 11.9%

Housing Insecurity by Race/Ethnicity

Homelessness by Race/Ethnicity

Food Insecurity by Race/Ethnicity

Food Security Questions

Food Insecurity Categories

Age

Age in Fall 2017

Age n Percent
18 to 20 268 31.0%
21 to 25 225 26.0%
25 to 30 138 16.0%
Over 30 234 27.1%

Housing Insecurity by Age