California floats plan to allow homeless students to sleep in their cars amid housing crisis

A new bill in the Golden State would allow homeless community college and state university students to sleep in their cars during the blue state’s housing crisis. 

A Public Policy Institute of California report found California has among the lowest homeownership rates and the most expensive housing in the U.S., with rent about 50% higher than the national median. 

The California bill seeks to provide a short-term solution to the state’s decades-long housing strife. 

Assemblymember Corey Jackson, a progressive California Democrat with a doctorate in social work, proposed a bill in March that would require the chancellors of the California state universities and the governing board of each community college district to develop an overnight parking program with “basic needs coordinators and campus security” by late 2026. 

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“This bill confronts a harsh reality to many of our students who are sleeping in their vehicles or other displaced settings as they are unable to find affordable housing, and that’s jeopardizing their education,” Jackson said. “What I am proposing is practical, immediate relief, overnight parking programs that turn campus lots into safe, temporary havens while the state works on lasting solutions.”

Almost three out of five California community college students are housing insecure and one in four are homeless, a survey conducted by the Community College League of California in 2023 found. 

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“We are in a housing crisis. We are in a homelessness crisis, and it’s not an either or approach. It’s a both and all of the above approach,” Jackson said. 

Many legislative proposals in California this year seek to fund student housing or cut through building regulation red tape, but Jackson aims to provide immediate relief for college students grappling with the housing crisis. 

Jackson, who acknowledged stakeholders’ disapproval of his bill, proposed a similar one during last year’s legislative session, but it failed. Its 2025 version, however, passed the Assembly Higher Education Committee this year. 

The bill has yet to face its first committee review and is already grabbing national attention as conservatives and progressives question what’s happening to California’s housing market. 

“After wrecking affordability in California, Democrats have nothing left but bad ideas,” California Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher told Fox News Digital in a statement. “They’re now proposing to let students sleep in cars because they can’t fix the housing crisis they created. This isn’t innovation. It’s desperation from a party that spent decades raising costs, blocking new housing and wasting billions on programs that failed. Letting students live in parking lots isn’t a solution. It’s proof their policies have completely collapsed.”

When reached for comment by Fox News Digital, Newsom’s office said it does not typically comment on pending legislation. 

“California is bucking not only national increases but reversing long-term trends in the state from decades of inaction prior to this administration. California’s progress in addressing homelessness is outperforming the nation,” a Newsom spokesperson said. 

Newsom’s office, citing 2024 records, stressed that homelessness is increasing nationwide by more than 18%, while California’s national trend is closer to 3%, lower than 40 other states. Newsom also touted the state’s more than 71,000 year-round shelter beds, which a spokesperson said is double the amount created during the 5-year period prior to the Newsom administration.

But that hasn’t stopped the criticism of Jackson’s bill. Fox News contributor Hugh Hewitt slammed the policy on “America’s Newsroom.”

“The problem in California is there are not enough homes and apartments. It’s a supply problem created over 50 years of no-growth, left-wing policies that are anti-housing. The solution is not to create homeless encampments, and each one of these will become that,” Hewitt said. “People are going to enroll in the community college for 18 bucks a credit, and then they’re going to put their car in the community college parking lot.”

Hewitt said these are the types of polices that drove people like him out of California “because it’s simply a broken state” with a “deep blue supermajority” and no ideas about how to build houses. 

“Newsom should spend more time governing and addressing California’s housing crisis, so students don’t have to sleep in cars & less time launching his own podcast. [I don’t know] how he sees himself as a 2028 contender when he has totally FAILED to address voters’ top issue: AFFORDABILITY,” Brendan Hartnett, a progressive policy advisor, added on X. 

Hartnett was referring to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s podcast, which features a revolving door of Trump allies and conservative guests, including Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon, in an attempt to show he is open to “criticism and debate without demeaning or dehumanizing one another.” The strategy follows criticism after the 2024 presidential election that Democrats didn’t prioritize new media appearances and unscripted conversations enough.