Seventeen more students at Florida Gulf Coast University will enjoy free housing in the 2024-2025 school year, thanks to a partnership between the school and a nonprofit focused on student housing.
Southern Scholarship Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, and FGCU teamed up 20 years ago in order to build three houses that would be free for FGCU students to live in while in attendance.
After a four-year build process interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Ian, the second of the three houses was dedicated Saturday afternoon.
The program, which was first piloted in 1953 and “started with a handful of young men living in an abandoned army barracks,” per Southern Scholarship Foundation’s website, has grown into a much larger program, with dozens of houses across Florida, in Tallahassee, Gainesville and Fort Myers.
For many students, the free housing they provide removes the final barrier from the road to college.
Vanessa Aguilar is a first-generation college student. Her parents, who are originally from the state of Morelos in Mexico, live in Lake Placid, Florida and work as blueberry pickers. Growing up, she said, she saw how hard her parents and aunts and uncles worked to make sure their kids were healthy – often at the expense of their own health.