FILE - In April 2024, Alberto Plata-Hurtado helps a Benson Polytechnic High School Escalera senior with his FAFSA.
Tiffany Camhi / OPB
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, opens to college students around this time every year. The federal form determines how much financial aid students may receive and is a gateway to federal grants, student loans, scholarships and other aid programs.
But FAFSA makes an assumption that doesn’t work for everyone: that a student’s parents are still part of their life.
For most undergraduate students under the age of 24, FAFSA requires financial information from their parents. Without it, the application is incomplete.
“Not every single college student is someone who can ask their parents or ask someone else. Some of us are just completely dead in the water,” said Alexa, a 21-year-old Portland State University creative writing student.
Alexa said she became homeless after she came out as transgender and was kicked out of her home in North Carolina. Because of concerns about safety from an abusive family member, OPB is only using her first name.
She moved to Oregon last year, where someone she knew took her in. “I started trying to pull myself up, get on my feet again, and eventually I did,” she said.
Alexa found work as an in-home caregiver. She worked full time, six days a week, while supporting herself.
“I got into a position that was decent enough where I could start trying to look into going to school. And that’s where I ran into the issues with the FAFSA,” she said.
Under federal financial aid rules, being financially independent from your parents isn’t necessarily enough to qualify as an independent student. With some exceptions, undergraduate students must have their parents’ information to complete the form and be eligible for most aid.
Alexa was told by Portland State’s financial aid office to apply for a ‘dependency override.’ That process required her to get a letter from her landlord and meet with a therapist to document that she came from an abusive home environment.
“They needed to know when the last time I talked to my parents was,” Alexa said. “And what exactly is stopping me from getting their information — which I had to go into detail — and that wasn’t really fun.”
Alexa has started attending classes but hasn’t yet heard whether she will receive financial aid. If she doesn’t receive aid, she said she will delay classes for another term while she earns enough money to pay for school.
Alexa’s experience isn’t uncommon among LGBTQ+ young adults. Research has found that LGBTQ+ young adults are more than twice as likely to experience homelessness as their heterosexual peers. A survey found that nearly half of LGBTQ+ young adults are estranged from at least one family member.
Rebecca Reilly works with LGBTQ+ young adults at New Avenues for Youth in Portland and said she frequently sees young people run into barriers with FAFSA.
“If you don’t have that parental buy-in, it’s almost impossible to really submit without that paperwork and information,” Reilly said.
Sometimes, she said, the application itself discourages young people from pursuing college.
“They see that it’s asking for this information they don’t have, so then they just don’t fill it out. It gets stopped before it’s even submitted,” she said.
For LGBTQ+ students, paying for college can be only one of several challenges. Reilly said young people she works with can also face mental health and substance use issues, as well as housing instability and a lack of family support.
Without a support system, students can struggle to stay enrolled. “If you don’t have family support, you end up feeling a little bit lost. It’s a lot of newness. It’s a lot of you on your own,” Reilly said.
And for queer and transgender students, the pressures can extend far beyond the classroom — to housing, health care and basic safety. Queer and transgender students often have to worry about their access to dorms, bathrooms, counseling and health services.
Kate Kyvik, an Oregon State University student studying fisheries, wildlife and conservation science, said they have to think about those concerns alongside their schoolwork.
“We don’t just have to sit there and worry about grades or can we afford it?” Kyvik said. “We’re also, daily, worrying about surviving in this country. We’re worrying about: Are we going to make it another day? Or what portions of our rights are we going to lose tomorrow?”
When Kyvik met their partner, who is transgender, one of their parents disowned them.
“That caused a lot of forks in the road or a lot of bumps in the journey in terms of mental health and being able to stay in school,” Kyvik said.
Kyvik found scholarships to fill their financial aid gaps, including one specific to LGBTQ+ students, the National Rainbow College Fund.
The scholarship offered more than financial support. “It validated my identity. It validated my family’s identity. It validated and encouraged me to just keep going,” Kyvik said.
Reilly said that kind of validation doesn’t always have to come in the form of money.
“They just need one person to see them and believe in them,” she said.
That person might be a friend, teacher or service provider — someone who can help a student navigate the paperwork and keep going when things get difficult.
“We do see it,” Reilly said. “As soon as one person is telling them they can do this, then young people are signing up for the FAFSA and they’re enrolling in college.”
