‘I don’t have anything to eat’: Contra Costa College gives students food, housing help

An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Grace Wolfman in a photo caption.

Kollin Foster arrived in the Bay Area from Georgia to attend Contra Costa College and play football. But after a landlord increased his rent by $500 with little warning, the 24-year-old found himself living in a Richmond motel with his little dog, wondering how long he could last before he would have to drop out and return home. Desperate to make his money last, he began skipping meals. He slept poorly and couldn’t focus on school work, missing several deadlines. 

But when Foster approached his instructors to explain his situation, some thought he was lying.

“They just didn’t believe me when I told them I had nowhere to live,” recalls Foster. 

Eventually, he learned about Contra Costa College’s Compass Center, which offers students help with housing, food, transportation, mental health and many other issues. At the center, which opened in 2023, Foster received help applying for new housing  and CalFresh, the state’s food assistance program. Plus, he could get free groceries at the center’s pantry. Most importantly, Foster found people who believed him and cared.

Today, Foster, whose working toward earning two associate degrees in communication studies and social and behavioral sciences, works at the Compass Center, where he packs orders for the new mobile pantry and sorts clothes, hygiene items and other donated items. He also helps welcome students and aims to reduce the stigma often associated with asking for and receiving help.

“Some students come to us and say ‘I’m going to be real. I don’t have anything to eat at home,’ he said. “So we help them out.”

1-in-5 Contra Costa College students will experience homelessness in coming year

Nearly 1-in-5 students at Contra Costa College will experience homelessness in the next 12 months, according to Hope Dixon, the college’s basic needs coordinator. That definition includes not only students who live in shelters or their cars, but also who couch surf with friends or relatives. 

The demand for Compass Center’s services is constant. More than 1,000 students requested housing, food, transportation or other resources just in the spring of 2025. The center serves breakfast and lunch and distributes groceries through its market five days a week.

“There are many more people who use this resource than I had ever thought,” said Grace Wolfman, a center student employee who hopes to become a social worker. “Sometimes it’s high school students who need a snack (Middle College High is on campus) and other times it’s an older student who has a family.”

Contra Costa College recently launched a pilot program with The Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano to offer a cold storage food pantry where students can order groceries — both staples and fresh produce — remotely and then pick them up at their convenience from a locker inside the school cafeteria. The pantry will operate on a limited schedule through the summer. 

“Meeting someone’s basic needs makes the biggest difference,” said Dixon. “It allows them to focus on school and shows them that someone cares.”

Dixon’s tiny office, which doubles as the Compass Center, is crammed with books, posters, a box of Kleenex for students who need a sympathetic shoulder to cry on and a bowl of snacks. There are plans to expand it in the coming years, dependent on funding, but for now, the center does what it can with limited resources. Dixon’s dream is “to create a true one-stop hub where students get connected to a majority of resources in a stigma-free way,” she said. 

Basic needs centers are a relatively new phenomenon on California college campuses, the result of 2021 legislation passed to address housing and food insecurity facing students. The problem was put in sharp relief during the pandemic when schools realized that some students didn’t have homes they could quarantine in and faced hunger when cafeterias closed. 

But the need still far outweighs the help available. In Contra Costa County, an estimated 167 young adults live on the street, in shelters or transitional housing, according to one study, but there are only 15 locally available beds for youths ages 18 to 24 and strict requirements about who can access them, according to Dixon.

There’s little Dixon can do for a student facing homelessness besides refer them to the county or help them apply for financial aid, which can take up to 10 weeks to be approved. She’d love to see an emergency shelter created for young adults or a safe parking program, where students would be allowed to sleep in their vehicles. She also said the campus needs an on-site mental health clinician.

Currently the only free mental health resources for this population are 12 free sessions of virtual therapy through the Timely Care app, interns from Berkeley’s Wright Institute who take a limited number of patients and the RYSE Center, which offers members up to age 21 access to a health care clinic at its Macdonald Avenue facility in Richmond.

As the Compass Center prepares for fall semester, Dixon and her team are working to get the word out. A recent survey found that only about half of students they surveyed know about the Compass Center. But with more awareness, comes the fear that the center will not be able to meet all of their needs.

“I often feel like I’m a failure in my job, but then I recognize that it’s the system that’s failing our students,” Dixon said.