LooLoo Amante had nowhere to live after her freshman year of college, so she bought a Scion with tinted windows and, at just 19 years old, slept in the driver’s seat.

She had little money for food, let alone a costly meal plan, so she sometimes asked friends to grab her a banana or apple from the dining hall.

Even some of her closest friends had no idea that homelessness was part of the college experience for Amante, an advertising major who ran on the cross-country team and served as San Jose State’s student-body president before graduating in May.

“I didn’t want to tell people that I was living out of my car or that I was couch-hopping,” she said.

Stories like Amante’s and new research on campus hunger and homelessness have awakened college leaders and policy makers to an uncomfortable reality: Many students are struggling just to survive. The very institutions that study poverty and hunger in urban centers and developing countries are confronting mounting evidence that their own students scrounge for a place to sleep and skip meals to pay their bills.

Researchers can’t easily document whether the problem is growing, because it hasn’t been thoroughly studied. Still, they say, rising tuition and California’s crushing rental prices — nearly $2,300 per month for an average one-bedroom apartment in Oakland and San Jose — have made it harder than ever for students to get by, and colleges are enrolling more students without a financial safety net.

A new UC survey found that 1 in 5 of students had gone hungry in the past year because they didn’t have money for food. CSU this year released the sobering estimate that 8-12 percent of students were homeless or lacked permanent housing. And a survey from San Jose State found that 20 percent of students had gone a whole day without a meal because money was so tight.

Those staggering numbers and others have spurred state legislation and moved campuses across California to set up food pantries, coordinate emergency relief and social services, and set new policies, such as allowing homeless students to stay in campus residence halls during breaks.

Some students sleep in ditches, sheds and highway underpasses, says Cyekeia Lee, an advocate who said she has known college athletes to bed down under bleachers. It’s a situation that many students are ashamed to share, and that colleges have been reluctant to accept, said Lee, of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth.

“For whatever reason, in our culture it’s hard to conceptualize in America this is where college students have to sleep,” Lee said.

One eye open

While the Great Recession left many adults heading back to school to restart careers, it also left 54-year-old Brenda Brown homeless. After struggling to find work as an administrative assistant, she enrolled at Chabot College and later transferred to CSU East Bay.

She rented rooms from families, which proved stressful and unstable, and recently moved back into her two-door Saturn. Every night, she said, she sleeps in the Hayward area “with one eye open.”

“At least I have a car,” she said. “I could probably stay at a couple of my friends’ houses, but I don’t want to be in anybody’s way.”

Brown hopes to graduate next year with a degree in communications and land a job that will pay for a small apartment. She misses having dresser drawers. She even misses paying bills.

“I’m just trying to get this degree and hopefully I will be able to help myself,” she said.

A half-hour south, while working two on-campus jobs, Amante found what she calls a “permanent couch situation” for her last two-plus years at SJSU. Soon after graduation, estranged from her mother, she found herself living back in her car. She is bound for graduate school at the University of Southern California, but still doesn’t know where she will live. She is reluctant to take out student loans and — as she did at San Jose State — is trying to cover her expenses with scholarships, grants and jobs.

“I just graduated,” she said, wiping away tears. “I don’t want to feel like I’m struggling.”

In her car, she keeps a collection of sunglasses, books, blankets, clothing and mail. She receives food assistance, thanks to help from a counselor at San Jose State, but has nowhere to store or prepare meals.

She pulled a pack of chewy, fruit-flavored candy from her glove compartment; her last meal was the night before, she said. It was 2:30 p.m.

A growing problem

Experts are still researching the effects of hunger or homelessness on college students. They suspect the strain causes many, if not most, to drop out.

Those odds make Amante’s accomplishments remarkable. “I expect great things from her,” said her former professor, Dona Nichols.

Most colleges don’t ask students if they have a permanent place to live. The federal government doesn’t ask, either, in its regular surveys of colleges. Sometimes, students without stable housing hide their situations, or don’t consider themselves homeless, even if they are living in a car.

“There is some real and some feared stigma,” said Rashida Crutchfield, a CSU Long Beach professor who is leading the system’s ongoing research of food insecurity and homelessness. “As adults, I think people want to attempt to solve their own problems as best as they can.”

A shared dorm room and meal plan at major Bay Area colleges costs between $14,000 and $18,000 a year, higher than the price of in-state tuition.

Typically when people talk about college affordability, “most of the conversation is around tuition and fees, and hardly ever do we talk about cost of living,” said Ruben Canedo, a UC Berkeley staffer whom UC President Janet Napolitano tapped to lead a systemwide committee on food security.

Demographic shifts on college campuses are also thought to be a factor. “If you go back 30 to 40 years, if you didn’t have money, you didn’t go to college,” said Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of higher education and sociology at Temple University, who co-authored a study last December, “Hungry to Learn.”

Now, Goldrick-Rab said, “even if you grew up solidly middle class, it’s still entirely possible you will fall short.”

Campus hunger has a “ramen-noodle” problem, experts say — a tendency to dismiss students’ struggles as a rite of passage. But as awareness of their hardship grows, California colleges and politicians are responding. Some universities are helping students apply for public food assistance and establishing programs to let students donate meal points to students in need. Many schools, such as CSU East Bay, San Jose State and UC Berkeley, have formed teams to help those in crisis and devise longer-term plans to meet students’ basic needs.

The Legislature is considering three bills to help homeless and food-insecure college students, from emergency grants to access to campus showers.

Humboldt State now accepts food stamps on campus. San Jose State is considering partnerships with local shelters.

Nichols, a journalism and communications lecturer at San Jose State, keeps protein-filled snacks in her office and has lost count of the number of students who have stayed in her home — including Amante — for days, weeks or even months.

“Isn’t there something that we can do to offer them emergency housing?” she asked.

Hearing that Amante was again living in her car, Nichols was saddened. “We’ve got to do something more. It’s absolutely heartbreaking.”

Follow Katy Murphy at Twitter.com/katymurphy.