{"id":21362,"date":"2022-04-01T16:14:34","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T20:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=21362"},"modified":"2022-04-01T16:14:40","modified_gmt":"2022-04-01T20:14:40","slug":"homelessness-rising-among-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2022\/04\/01\/homelessness-rising-among-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Homelessness rising among students"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nearly 3,600 students in Polk County Public Schools are considered homeless, a 400 student increase from the previous year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cHaving that struggle has become a way of life. We are seeing more and more families that it has not been a way of life for them. This is something completely new,\u201d said Ben Ruch, the homeless liaison for Polk County Public Schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruch was one of the panel members at a forum on homelessness in Lakeland on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we have a student who is waking up in the morning at a motel that they can\u2019t afford to stay at anymore, and they have no idea where they\u2019re going to stay that night. Imagine bringing that to school with you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The price of housing has skyrocketed, too. Advocates say that\u2019s making it harder for people to stay in affordable housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s causing some people to become homeless when they had no expectation of facing that problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erica Smith shared her story at the forum as she\u2019s experienced homelessness since she was 13-years-old. She offered advice to students experiencing homelessness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cTry to be calm and patient, and just try to find places to go to help that offer to help and help you,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaders encourage you to visit the Polk County Public Schools website for more information about resources to help students in need or to learn how you can help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nearly 3,600 students in Polk County Public Schools are considered homeless, a 400 student increase from the previous year. \u201cHaving that struggle has become a way of life. We are… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[2638],"class_list":["post-21362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-homelessness-rising-among-students"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}