Higher education advocates hope to convince Oregon lawmakers to find $5 million to keep paying for campus benefits navigators who in the last three years have helped nearly 40,000 college students find food, housing and meet other basic needs.

Oregon lawmakers in 2021 required every public college and university to hire a benefits navigator to help needy students connect to college, community and government benefits that could help them stay in school, including things like rental assistance and food stamps.

The initial bill allocated $5 million for campuses to hire those workers. But that funding would not be re-upped in 2025-27 under the budget that Gov. Tina Kotek recommended to lawmakers late last year.

If lawmakers do not include the $5 million in the next budget, colleges and universities will still have to employ benefits navigators. But navigators worry that their services could be watered down at a time when they’re trying to meet increased demand.

If the funding goes away, colleges may have to pull money away from other student services to fund navigators or push navigator duties onto an employee with a different job, which could interrupt the relationships and student aid framework that navigators have built over the past few years, said Zoe Cooper-Caroselli, who coordinates a statewide network of basic needs navigators.

“It would be a huge blow to the trajectory of this work,” Cooper-Caroselli said.

Asked about whether the cut was intentional, a Kotek spokesperson said only that “the governor stands behind her budget.”

Student advocates want lawmakers to keep funding the navigator positions and to pass another $22 million package known as the “Student Basic Needs and Workforce Stabilization Act.” Those bills would allocate $10 million to expand current benefits programs, $6.5 million to affordable student housing grants and $5 million to subsidize textbooks.

“Maintaining current funding for navigators is critical – and it’s not enough,” said Nick Keough, a legislative organizer with the American Federation of Teachers Oregon. “We have to go further and ensure we make investments in basic needs.”

As basic needs programs grow more common on campuses nationwide, research is still emerging about how they impact outcomes. Education Northwest researchers who studied four basic needs programs in various states found in a study last year that students who accessed services completed slightly more credits than students who didn’t and were more likely to remain enrolled from one term to the next. Researchers said the findings on short term academic impacts were “promising,” but they said more research is needed to understand long-term impacts.

During an informational hearing earlier this month, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle complemented the benefits navigation program — though some called for additional data around its impacts.

“Every university, every community college that I’ve gone to, they praise what’s going on,” Sen. Lew Frederick, D-Portland, said. “In many cases, they only have one person able to do that – and they need more.”

Nearly half of all Oregon community college students experience food or housing insecurity, Donna Lewelling, community college director at the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission told lawmakers at a hearing this month. The state’s two dozen or so basic needs navigators meet with those students to learn about their circumstances and help them apply for government or community resources. In some cases, they also provide direct emergency support in the form of food from a campus food pantry or gas cards to help people get to and from campus.

“The systems we have in place for helping people, as well-meaning as they are, are super complicated,”said David Plotkin, vice president of student services at Clackamas Community College. “I don’t know how I would manage as a poverty stricken student, possibly traumatically affected. I wouldn’t be able to pull all of those things together without help.”

Helen Paz, the benefits navigator at Clackamas, worked with some 230 students last academic year – and she’s on pace to more than double that count in 2024-25.

She likes to tell lawmakers about one student she helped in the fall of 2022: a mother who was fleeing domestic violence in California. The woman had four kids and a voucher for Section 8 housing in Oregon, but no funds for a deposit or for rent. The college helped her get settled in Oregon and enroll in classes. It helped her find child care and pay for textbooks, then provided occasional help with rent and utility payments.

The woman earned an accounting certificate in 2023 and came back for an associate degree which she expects to finish in the spring, Paz said. She’s employed full time at a local credit union now, “doing exactly what she wanted to do,” Paz said.

“She just went from being like this very terrified woman to this super strong role model for her kids and a paragon of what it means to be a survivor,” Paz said.

Clackamas Community College is in the middle of its budget cycle right now, Plotkin said, and he doesn’t have a firm answer about how the college would continue to pay for Paz’s work if the roughly $177,000 the college currently receives for benefits navigators goes away.

“We’re a lean organization. We know that we can do more for our students and we don’t have the funds to do that now,” Plotkin said. “If we have fewer funds, ultimately some services that students need will surely suffer.”

Demand for the navigators’ services has increased steadily, Lewelling told lawmakers. In 2022, benefits navigators helped about 8,000 students statewide. That more than doubled to 18,000 students in 2024.

Navigators disproportionately serve students of color and women, Lewelling told lawmakers.

“Eliminating the funding for this program would send a clear message that Oregon does not prioritize students’ basic needs or their futures,” Cooper-Caroselli said.