San Jose State University students without a place to sleep will soon be able to bunk in Airbnb rentals usually reserved for business executives.

The first of its kind in the nation, the partnership between the popular vacation rental platform, the nonprofit Bill Wilson Center, the San Jose mayor’s office and the college aims to address a pressing need for affordable housing among young people studying at the campus. A 2018 California State University report found that about 13 percent of SJSU students — more than 4,000 — had experienced some form of homelessness.

Announced Wednesday, the pilot program will offer temporary free housing to homeless SJSU students who have been sleeping in their cars, the library or elsewhere.

“I have high hopes for it,” said Sparky Harlan, CEO of the Bill Wilson Center, which serves homeless youth and young people. “You have a lot of leaders coming together to say what are we going to do to come up with a different way of looking at a hard problem.”

In the last several years, the campus group Student Homeless Alliance has called on the university to do more to help students struggling to find housing — pushing for permission for students to park overnight on campus and more emergency beds.

The university has said it is sympathetic to students’ plight — offering emergency assistance through SJSU Cares, which already connects some students to the Bill Wilson Center for help — but has focused more on long-term solutions like adding dorm space. Some advocates have complained that doesn’t do enough to help with immediate housing needs.

“We’re going to have to tackle the issue of housing insecurity in our region as a community, which means we’re going to have to think of cross-sector solutions and partnerships,” said Patrick Day, San Jose State University vice president of student affairs, adding that he sees this partnership as a great beginning. “There won’t just be one solution.”

Through the partnership, the Bill Wilson Center can reserve and pay for rooms on behalf of students who need help through Airbnb for Work, which is typically used by businesses to reserve space for employees, and Airbnb will refund the host and guest booking fees to the center. Students will be able to stay for a few days or weeks while the center helps them secure longer-term, stable housing.

Chris Lehane, Airbnb’s senior vice president of global policy, said he thinks Airbnb hosts will be eager to help students.

“Our host community is incredibly generous with opening up their homes,” Lehane said, adding that he expects some hosts to sign up with the company specifically to participate in the program.

If the pilot is successful, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, Harlan and others hope the idea can be expanded to help students at other colleges in the city. And Harlan said she appreciates the tech company’s willingness to be creative.

“They’re willing to sort of experiment with you and let you try things out,” she said. “I like that.”

The program comes at a key time. Campus housing closes over the holidays, which can leave students without someplace to go particularly vulnerable, Harlan said, adding that she hopes to reserve space for students through Airbnb during that time. While some students become homeless after enrolling in college, many arrive at school with already precarious housing situations and can find themselves bunking in the library in December.

It’s not the first time the city of San Jose has worked with Airbnb. After the Coyote Creek flood in 2017, the company helped house residents displaced by the devastating disaster.

“We’ve had a good relationship with them. This was an area where we knew there was an obvious need,” Liccardo said, “so we’re grateful for their partnership, and we hope we can address some significant part of the homeless crisis which afflicts our students.”

Related Articles San Jose AAUW provides gifts for at-risk South Bay teens

Affordable homes, some for the homeless, eyed near San Jose malls

For accurate count, U.S. census workers reach out to Bay Area homeless residents

Letters: Why blame Newsom? | Success story | Champion of ethics | Contradicted column | Legacy of failure | Reflecting us all

San Jose begins cleaning up massive piles of illegal dumping on Monterey Road The mayor hopes, he said, that host property owners who participate in the pilot will ultimately consider housing students for a full year. Harlan and Lehane do, too.

And San Jose State is not unique. A 2017 survey found that some 10 percent of UC Berkeley students had experienced homelessness since arriving at the school. From UC Santa Cruz to local community colleges, dozens of students are sleeping in cars and vans. And at elementary schools up the Peninsula, students and their families, struggling under the region’s burdensome housing costs, are finding themselves without a safe place to live.

“This has the potential to also be another model that the mayor has helped identify and create and launch,” Lehane said, hailing San Jose as a prime incubator for creative ideas that are scalable. “We’ll learn a lot.”