{"id":193203,"date":"2022-12-15T07:30:39","date_gmt":"2022-12-15T12:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=193203"},"modified":"2023-06-27T12:57:47","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T16:57:47","slug":"in-new-documentary-series-senior-explores-student-housing-insecurity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2022\/12\/in-new-documentary-series-senior-explores-student-housing-insecurity\/","title":{"rendered":"In New Documentary Series, Senior Explores Student Housing Insecurity"},"content":{"rendered":"

During one of Brianna Chance\u2019s shoots for her new docuseries project, \u201c<\/span>Housing (In)Justice,<\/span><\/a>\u201d earlier this year, a passerby asked what she was doing. When she told him that she was working on a series that would shed light on homelessness and housing insecurity for college students, he laughed.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI asked, what\u2019s so funny?\u201d Chance ’23 (SFA, ED) recalls. \u201cHe said, \u2018Well, when you think of homeless people, you think of people on the streets. I mean, college students aren\u2019t homeless \u2013 they have dorms and apartments.\u2019\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Though the comment stung, Chance knew better than to be upset with him. She supplied him with statistics and a Google Drive folder of her own research instead. (Dorms typically close for the summer and breaks, she reminded him\u2014and during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, many closed indefinitely.) And on Nov. 6, when she premiered \u201cHousing (In)Justice\u201d to an emotional audience in UConn\u2019s Dodd Center for Human Rights, she let students\u2019 stories speak for themselves.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Brianna Chance ’23 discusses her “Housing (In)Justice” project at the Dodd Center for Human Rights on Nov. 6, 2022. (Shawn Kornegay)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chance says she has encountered skepticism about student homelessness from all corners. Mainstream representations of homelessness that depict people living on streets or in shelters, combined with a lack of exposure to diverse stories, have fostered a widespread disbelief that the term could apply to college students. This doubt even impacts the students who are or have been homeless themselves.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAt one point I was like, did any of that even happen? Was I ever really homeless? I started to question my own experiences,\u201d Chance says. \u201cAnd this project cracked it open for me. It was like, no, all of that really did happen, but it felt like it didn\u2019t because nobody was listening to you. That is what we\u2019re trying to avoid.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Knowing that she wanted to create a project that represented \u201can intersection of art and social justice,\u201d Chance obtained funding and support from the <\/span>BOLD Women\u2019s Leadership Network<\/span><\/a> to launch the documentary series. It was her first foray into filmmaking. With help from friend and fellow UConn filmmaker Isaiah Edwards ’21 (SFA), she quickly gained the camera savvy and editing know-how to produce her five-vignette series. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The project, which includes an accompanying standalone magazine, premiered on Nov. 6. Chance surprised viewers at the end \u2013 not even her closest friends knew that Chance herself was the subject of the fifth and final video in the series.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s like someone’s worst nightmare to sit out there and tell everyone all the awful things that you’ve been through,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I’m really glad that I did that, because I had asked other people to do it, so why couldn’t I do it? I need to be able to hold myself to the same standard emotionally that I’m holding other people to. And if I’m expecting vulnerability from others, you\u2019d best believe I need to be practicing that emotional vulnerability as well.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Combatting a Culture of Silence<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The decision to include herself in the project was deliberate, if terrifying, says Chance. It was part of her commitment to breaking down the barriers to discussing student homelessness that exist on the societal as well as on the interpersonal level. During the production of this series, these barriers presented themselves in numerous ways.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

First, according to Chance, a major chilling effect for students sharing their stories is that many simply aren\u2019t aware that they have experienced housing insecurity. The lack of open dialog about the issue prevents these students from accessing language to describe their experiences or imagining community resources that could assist them. Instead, they stay engulfed in doubt and confusion \u2014 many just trying to keep their head above water day by day.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Chance discovered that the students she spoke to were better able to identify with the subject of housing insecurity when she asked them open-ended questions.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s very difficult because people tend to sit there and they deny, deny, deny to themselves. But you\u2019d be surprised, if you ask somebody a simple question \u2014 \u2018Tell me what happened in your sophomore year with your housing\u2019 \u2014 it all comes out,\u201d she says.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But another barrier to open conversation is the social stigma attached to homelessness, which makes it even harder for students to discuss their experiences and ask for help.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEven when you do know what housing insecurity is, there\u2019s still that sense of you wanting to deny it because you don\u2019t want to be seen as the person that doesn\u2019t have a place to live. You don\u2019t want to be stigmatized as the person who is sleeping in their car,\u201d Chance says. \u201cThere\u2019s a huge stigma surrounding it. So even if you know what those words mean, it\u2019s not the first thing you talk about when you\u2019re in a conversation with somebody.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Repetition with a Difference<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Chance said she was surprised by how all her narrators\u2019 stories differed from each other, even as they bore key similarities. As the series developed, she realized that her fellow students and alumni weren\u2019t telling the same story over and over \u2014 they were telling different parts of the same story, one that spanned generations and encompassed a diverse cosmos of backgrounds and perspectives.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just so eye-opening to see that my story aligned with a lot of people\u2019s in some ways,\u201d Chance says. \u201cLike the heartache and the pain that Teanna was feeling, I also felt, but then also the lack of resources and the lack of vocabulary and awareness about my situation was also felt through stories like Amber. Just seeing where those paths crossed, it kind of created this patchwork of narratives that I wasn’t expecting.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The work was hard. Filming the interviews was intensely emotional and intimate, and at many points Chance realized that she \u201cdidn\u2019t budget for\u201d how heavy the process would be. Now, though, with the project wrapped and available to the public, she knows that it was worth it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Raising awareness about student homelessness has the potential to demystify the issue and transform the way homeless and housing-insecure students reach resources and advance their education. Chance also hopes that seeing these stories onscreen will lessen the shame felt by these same students.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, she hopes that \u201cHousing (In)Justice\u201d will clear up some misconceptions about student homelessness once and for all. Chance unflinchingly documents the lived reality of housing-insecure students, reminding viewers of the structural barriers to academic success \u2013 not to mention social and emotional wellbeing \u2013 these students continue to face.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

UConn students facing housing insecurity or homelessness can reach out to the <\/span><\/i>Dean of Students office<\/span><\/i><\/a> or the <\/span><\/i>Office of Residential Life<\/span><\/i><\/a>\u00a0to be connected with accommodations.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brianna Chance \u201823, a music education major, received funding from the BOLD Women\u2019s Leadership Network for her project documenting student homelessness and housing insecurity in Connecticut<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":175,"featured_media":193211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,1715,2312,1855,156,2076,1914,2235,2306,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2413],"class_list":["post-193203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-community-impact","category-hri","category-neag","category-profile","category-research","category-sfa","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-voices","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-31 07:53:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193203"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193421,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193203\/revisions\/193421"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/193211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193203"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=193203"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=193203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}