In March 2015 at UCLA, Louis and his classmate Luke Shaw discovered other students sleeping in spaces that were not meant for sleeping: classrooms, student lounges, and cars in the parking lot. The slow, yet eventual realization that their peers were trying to reach their academic dreams despite experiencing homelessness, suffering in isolation, sat in the dresser of their minds until it could not any longer. Within nine months, Louis and Luke founded Students 4 Students, a shelter run entirely by UCLA students, to give their fellow students a safe place to sleep and food to eat. UCLA medical and social welfare students provide health, social, and wrap-around services. Because they were students themselves, they understood first-hand the thousands of opportunities in a lifetime that are at stake between gaining a diploma, or falling just short.

New research on campus hunger and homelessness has awakened college leaders and policymakers to an uncomfortable reality: many students are struggling just to survive. According to recent studies, 5% of all UC students reported experiencing homelessness in 2017, 10% of Cal State students, and 20% of community college students in LA, experienced homelessness this past year. This is the untold crisis of college hunger and homelessness.