homeless students find a brighter future

One month into his senior year of high school, Terrence Nickerson found himself homeless and alone.

He had been kicked out of his step-father's house after an argument and had no money, no nearby family and nowhere to go. After crashing with friends for a month, Nickerson wound up at a homeless shelter in downtown Miami, in a large dormitory where 100 men slept in wall-to-wall bunk beds. For the first week he was there, Nickerson walked from the Chapman Partnership shelter on North Miami Avenue to Miami Jackson Senior High School in Allapattah - over an hour each way.

It would have been enough to demoralize anyone, especially a teenager with no family to rely on. But Nickerson was able to tap into a network of support at the shelter, at his high school and through Project UP-START, an office in the Miami-Dade school district that supports homeless students. He got transportation to school so he could keep going to Miami Jackson and help to apply for college, earning a scholarship and taking advantage of state tuition waivers for homeless and foster youth to attend Florida International University, where he is now a freshman.

"Being at the shelter, it changed my whole mindset," said Nickerson, who is now 19. "I felt pretty supported mainly."

Nickerson now lives in the FIU dorms, but last school year he was one of more than 6,000 students in Miami-Dade without a stable place to live. That includes students who sleep in homeless shelters, on the street, in a car, in a hotel room or squeezed into someone else's home - known as "doubling up." In the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, many homeless students like Nickerson are succeeding in school and finding a brighter future, thanks in part to the support of programs like UP-START in the school district and similar initiatives at FIU and Miami Dade College, which help homeless students take care of basic needs so they can focus on doing well in school.

"We provide a sense of support for the kids and families going through this to explain to them that they're not alone," said Debra Albo-Steiger, Project UP-START's program manager. "One of the hardest parts about this situation is that you feel so alone and you don't want to tell anyone."

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