SAN DIEGO (KGTV) -- A recent study of California's community colleges found that 1 in 5 students had been homeless in the past year.

To help these students, San Diego's community college district offers showers, priority class registration, food pantries, and help finding homeless services on and off campus.

But a new State Assembly bill aims to aid homeless students further by requiring schools to let them sleep in their vehicles overnight in campus parking lots and structures.

One statistic explains why so many California civic and nonprofit advocacy groups are worried about next year’s U.S. census: 72% of the state’s population belongs to one of the groups historically undercounted during the once-a-decade process.

Researchers believe as many as 1.3 million residents could be missed — a mistake with profound political and policy implications for the next decade.

“There’s really a lot riding on census data,” Secretary of State Alex Padilla said at an event last week in Sacramento.

Doing homework at night is hard for her.

If her flashlight batteries are dead, she relies on streetlights to see, but it also gets cold and damp outside as her hands cramp up while attempting to complete assignments.

Ink sometimes bleeds and the letters blur—B’s begin to look like eights and M’s begin to look like W’s, she said.

But most enduring was when homeless El Camino College student Roxann Toshiko Tomiyasu used to sleep in the Masao W. Satow Library parking lot in Gardena and run into drunkards and gang members, she said.

By allocating $1 million last week toward a creek restoration project set to rejuvenate threatened and endangered species and reduce flooding in Pescadero, county officials locked in funding needed to begin a dredging effort experts expect will give the Butano Creek a chance to reset.

Since starting school last fall, Sacramento City College student Shae Fox has slept, studied and lived in her car twice. She recently moved into an apartment and is now waiting on her financial aid money to be processed in order to pay rent. But she’s worried about keeping a roof over her head.

“I can’t catch a break,” Fox said. “I just want to unpack my stuff somewhere. I just want to call a place my home. I want to get mail somewhere.”

For a growing number of community college students in California, one of the biggest concerns isn’t exams or essays—it’s finding a safe place to sleep in their cars at night.

An estimated 20 percent of the state’s 2.1 million community college students have experienced homelessness or don’t have a stable place to live, according to a report released this month by California Community Colleges. Many of them rely on their vehicles for shelter.

STANDING TALL ... Palo Alto resident Christine Blasey Ford, who has become known for going public with her sexual-assault allegations against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, has been selected as the 24th Assembly District's Woman of the Year, state Assemblyman Marc Berman's office announced on Monday. Ford, 52, a psychology professor at Palo Alto University, was picked for her "remarkable act of courage" in testifying about her claims before the Senate Judiciary Committee in late September. "Dr.

Nineteen percent of students attending California’s community college system have experienced homelessness in the last year, while 60 percent have experienced recent housing insecurity and 50 percent have struggled with food insecurity, according to a report released Thursday, March 7.

The study, conducted by the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice at Temple University’s College of Education in Philadelphia, surveyed nearly 40,000 students at 57 community colleges during the fall semesters of 2016 and 2018.