A Hands-on Class on Homelessness

BU Today: A Hands-on Class on Homelessness

Sargent College students partner to help unhoused in Framingham through BU MetroBridge program

The streets of downtown Framingham, Mass., were the classroom on a hazy day last month  for Kaytlin Eldred and 10 of her Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences students. Guided by the city’s community development coordinator and the head of a local business association, the Cultural Humility, Racial Justice, and Health class taught by Eldred (SPH’17) looped past Brazilian restaurants, social service agencies, and a new, upscale apartment complex with rents that “I can’t even fathom,” one of the officials said.

Ariyana Aghazadeh-Bonab (CAS’24) fathomed for him, looking up the building on her cell phone. “Twenty-four hundred for one bedroom,” she announced. Aghazadeh-Bonab did some seat-of-the-pants math: for tenants to afford that and pay no more than one-third of their income for housing—the standard economists suggest for affordability—they’d have to clear “around $128,000 before taxes” […] Read the full story by Rich Barlow at BU Today