Homeless Sarasota students on their own now have help with housing
Herald-Tribune | By Saundra Amrhein | March 4, 2025
Last August, Miles Bean sat slumped in his car outside Ringling College of Art & Design.
Despite admission to one of his top-pick schools on a partial scholarship, Bean felt like he was at the lowest point of his life.
Homeless for much of the previous year, he had spent months as a senior at Booker High bouncing between a motel and a friend’s pool house while juggling his studies and several jobs.
All summer he’d worked nonstop to shoulder living expenses and save for Ringling in the fall. But in the end, it wasn’t enough. Now with classes underway, not only did he not have his share of tuition, the pool house owner needed the space back. Bean was days away from losing his housing and having to sleep in his car.
“I had no idea what I was going to do,” he said.
Hundreds of K-12 and early college students in Sarasota and Manatee counties – and thousands more across the state – are homeless, numbers that have been on the rise.
Now, a new program in Sarasota County will help assist young people like Bean, an often overlooked subset of homeless students who suffer unique challenges.
Miles Bean, 18, is among the first recipients for the Henson Fund that has launched a new $70,000 grant to SchoolHouse Link in Sarasota County to help unaccompanied homeless students and youth with housing during the next year.
Unaccompanied and alone
Experts call this subset “unaccompanied homeless students and youth,” which means they are not in the physical custody of a parent or guardian.
Though their numbers are smaller than other homeless populations, their need for safe, affordable housing is the same. What’s more, experts say, the personal and societal impact of homelessness among unaccompanied students can have catastrophic, lifelong consequences.
Homelessness greatly raises their chances of quitting school. That affects their future income prospects for decades and increases their likelihood of becoming homeless again in the future, studies show.
Yet housing barriers – formidable for many right now – are especially steep for working teens out on their own. There is also less assistance available to them, with most programs focused on helping rehouse homeless families.
“These young adults are the ones that are kind of a bit forgotten,” said P.J. Brooks, chief operations officer at Community Assisted & Supported Living, or CASL. “There’s no formal system to work with them.”
Now local advocates are hoping to change that, thanks to a $70,000 grant from local philanthropists Joe and Mary Kay Henson that has helped fund a one-year pilot program to provide housing assistance to unaccompanied homeless students and youth in Sarasota County.
It’s a combination that helped turn Bean’s life around in an instant.
Urgent timing
Long involved in educational initiatives, the Hensons were moved to act after hearing stories about housing barriers for students like Bean, said Bianca Harris, director of programs for The Henson Fund.
“If we don’t catch those barriers, we will begin to see a lot of our students not graduate from high school,” added Harris, who is a former school principal, teacher and counselor as well as a past chief program officer with the Education Foundation of Sarasota County.
The hope in removing those obstacles is to make high school graduation “non-negotiable,” she said, and to meet students “where they dream” so they can thrive after high school.
“This is a community problem that we are trying to lend support to in any way we can,” Harris said.
The grant will go toward an existing and innovative student housing program offered among many other services for homeless Sarasota students by Schoolhouse Link. An office within the nonprofit Safe Children Coalition, Schoolhouse Link works with Sarasota County Schools as the designated liaison to help homeless students and families – a requirement for all school districts under federal law.
But for years Schoolhouse Link faced the challenge of cobbling together donations for its housing assistance program. More recently, though, it has been out of funds.
The timing of the Henson grant is critical for two reasons, said Ellen McLaughlin, Schoolhouse Link’s program director. First, as Title IX programs under the U.S. Department of Education, funding for school homeless services contracts is under threat of being cut at the moment by Washington. Second is the area’s ongoing housing crisis.
“Even families with two incomes can’t afford housing anymore,” she said.
Basic survival needs
So far this school year 583 students in Sarasota County schools are counted as homeless, McLaughlin said. That number is expected to reach or surpass more than 700 homeless students, which is typical of the last several school years (not including the year Hurricane Ian struck, when the amount climbed to over 1,000).
Of those 583 students, 58 are considered unaccompanied homeless students in the high school system. In addition, her team also works with another 40 homeless young adults who are connected to a GED program or post-secondary schooling.
Schoolhouse Link assists with transportation, meals, and important documents that often go missing or misplaced when students are in the turmoil of housing transition. The program also helps students through mentorship, mental health referrals and household budgeting – especially important for unaccompanied students trying to survive on their own, she added.
Like homeless students with families, most unaccompanied students “couch surf” or live “doubled-up,” staying with or renting rooms from friends or distant relatives.
Given the pressures and disruption, homeless students in general are much more likely to miss school, fall behind and develop behavior problems, studies show. Graduation rates also plummet – going from 82% overall for Florida seniors to 64% for homeless students.
Statewide, the number of unaccompanied homeless students has been growing alongside overall homelessness for young students. On the decline before the pandemic, the number of homeless unaccompanied students is now approaching pre-pandemic highs, to just over 7,000 for the 2022-23 school year. Total K-12 student homelessness reached almost 95,000 that same year, according to a recent Florida Council on Homelessness Annual Report.
Unaccompanied student homelessness is also on the rise in Manatee County, said Brenda Rossi. She is the programs specialist with Project Heart, the designated Title IX program within Manatee County Schools that works with homeless students.
Manatee Schools currently counts 1,422 total homeless students – almost three times as many as Sarasota at the moment. Of those, 250 are homeless high school students, including 30 who are unaccompanied – the last number about double what her team has seen in previous years.
Though some homeless students are 18 and considered adults, they are fragile, she said. While many are highly driven, excellent students, they can also crack under the pressure of juggling school, full-time jobs and housing at this age.
“They already have a lot of trauma in their lives,” Rossi said. “Without stable housing and support, many are forced to reconsider their academic aspirations to meet basic survival needs.”
Mentorship makes a big difference, she said. Rossi noted that since bringing on college-career counselor Nick Ceballo three years ago, Project Heart has seen graduation rates for homeless students climb by 10% to 74%.
Still, housing assistance like the one Sarasota now has through the Henson Fund is critical for homeless students, she stressed. Many programs or shelters that do exist for homeless students and families cap the age for children at 17.
“If they could have some resources and support,” she said, “it could change the trajectory of their lives.”
A series of blessings
That day sitting in his car in August, Bean tried to gather his wits.
Through his senior year, he had lost many things. His parental support, after his mother and her boyfriend kicked him out of the house. His closest friends, thanks to the demands of long hours at school and part-time jobs with Starbucks, a film crew, and the Sarasota Art Museum.
Many times – feeling caught in a hamster wheel – he thought he was even losing his mental well-being.
“I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t making it work,” he said. “I felt, like, depressed – often.”
And now, he was losing hope of fulfilling his boyhood dream to produce films.
But there was something he still had: a mentor he’d studied under at Booker’s award-winning Visual and Performing Arts program.
Bean called the teacher from his cell phone, and what happened next – he still couldn’t explain six months later.
“It was just a series of blessings,” he said.
His teacher involved Rachel Shelley, Booker’s principal, who picked up the phone, too. By the end of the day, after a flurry of conversations between Ringling, several prominent foundations, the Henson Fund, Schoolhouse Link and others, a plan was hatched.
“This was a village,” said Brooks of CASL about the collective effort.
Ringling waived the rest of Bean’s tuition as an unaccompanied student and funds from the new grant were committed to pay Bean’s rent at one of CASL’s one-bedroom apartments.
The apartments – leased by CASL at discounted rates from philanthropist Joan Geyer – are set aside for youth aging out of foster care as well as unaccompanied homeless students. But while the former have access to official rent assistance programs, the latter do not.
Schoolhouse Link will continue offering wrap-around services to Bean, as will CASL, through a peer specialist.
For now, Bean can focus on his studies at Ringling without worrying about a roof over his head. He finally has time to make new friends.
“It’s a huge relief,” he said of the help. The turmoil of the past year was formative, he added.
“It forced me to really grow up,” he said. “I’m pretty proud of the way I am able to hold myself.”
He’s also proud of something else. During his time of difficulty, he never stopped writing. Now he has a screenplay in hand, based on the experiences of the past year.
“And I’m getting it produced this summer,” he said.
