My freshman year of college, I had a couple Spanish classes with a young woman who was homeless. I didn't know it at the time (I expect few did), but I read about her journey a few years later in The Huntsville Times – how friends of hers, also homeless, scraped together money to help her somehow find a way to attend UAH.
Now working at UAB, it breaks my heart to know that this problem persists. There are homeless students at UAB, too (and yes, we have programs in place to help them). To paraphrase the teacher interviewed in the article: It's invisible even when you're looking.