fafsa homeless question?

TrinSF
Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:49:50 +0000

If you check it, you will almost certainly be asked to provide documentation from a social worker or shelter director verifying your homeless status. Do a websearch for homeless fafsa verification to see what I mean. The FAFSA relies on the McKinney-Vento Act for its definition of homelessness:

…means individuals who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence (within the meaning of section 103(a)(1)); and

(B) includes —

(i) children and youths who are sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason; are living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camping grounds due to the lack of alternative adequate accommodations; are living in emergency or transitional shelters; are abandoned in hospitals; or are awaiting foster care placement;

(ii) children and youths who have a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings (within the meaning of section 103(a)(2)(C));

(iii) children and youths who are living in cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, substandard housing, bus or train stations, or similar settings; and

(iv) migratory children (as such term is defined in section 1309 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965) who qualify as homeless for the purposes of this subtitle because the children are living in circumstances described in clauses (i) through (iii).

So, to be more blunt, if you are living in a dorm, you are not homeless. If your parents don’t want you living with them, you’re not homeless. If you had to find some other place to live, like with a friend, in a house, you’re not homeless.

You’re not homeless UNTIL you do not have a place to sleep at night, and must use shelters, outdoors, or places not meant to be homes. In this way, the FAFSA is really consistent – it doesn’t ask if you or your parents are going to have income in the future to base your FA on, either. The basis is about what has happened in the past year. It’s like … you’re not starving just because you may not have food next month; you’re only starving if you haven’t been able to eat now, and in the recent past.