With classes starting this week, OSU’s Basic Needs Center is prepared to assist any students who might need guidance on finding important resources like housing, food, affordable textbooks and more.
It all starts with a conversation.
The BNC has a peer navigator team made up of student workers who have received help from the center themselves, and who know firsthand the barriers and questions other students might face. Any student at OSU can drop by for a one-on-one conversation with a peer navigator, where they will talk about what the student needs and work together to determine the best course of action. Students at Ecampus and OSU-Cascades and other distance learners can call for a remote conversation.
“We do it with our students; we don’t do it for them,” said peer navigator Susie Ortiz, a third-year nutrition and dietetics major who recently started a master’s program in public health. “A lot of that is to help build self-efficacy and autonomy. We’re here to help guide and have it be a learning experience.”
The Basic Needs Center focuses on three key areas: housing, food and living on a budget with limited resources
According to research by the OSU Division of Student Affairs Food Insecurity Taskforce, about 1 in 4 OSU students experience food insecurity, meaning they have difficulty accessing adequate food to live an active and healthy life. The 2022 report found food insecurity is disproportionately prevalent among student groups that are already vulnerable, including students of color and first-generation college students. On the housing front, roughly 37% of Corvallis households are severely rent-burdened, spending more than half their income on rent, and the rental vacancy rate in 2024 was just 1.6%.
But asking for help with basic needs can be very stigmatizing, so the goal with peer navigators is to make those conversations feel more approachable, Ortiz said. BNC staff emphasize that any student, regardless of need, can hang out at the center, ask for help and participate in events and workshops.
“I hear from a lot of people who, because they’re in college, think of themselves as an adult in the sense that they should know what to do; that they should already have this knowledge,” Ortiz said. “But that’s not true. For people coming to college, it’s still a new place, and it’s OK to not know the resources around here.”
Peer navigators want to empower students to find solutions themselves, and are trained to identify concrete goals as well as to help students think through resources they may already have access to, such as their own social networks. The team recently added 16 navigators, bringing the total to 24.
“We can help students build out their steps so they are going and taking control on improving their situation,” said Andrea Norris, peer-aid coordinator at the BNC.
In some cases, students find what they need at the BNC, located in the Champinefu Lodge on Madison Avenue on the east side of campus. Peer navigators also help refer students to other centers or organizations that can meet needs beyond what the BNC provides.
The center offers free laundry by appointment, a free shower with towels and toiletries provided, a free hygiene pantry that includes menstrual supplies and a weekly food pantry on Wednesday mornings. (And because the food pantry receives supplies from the Linn-Benton Food Share, it’s open to the entire community, not just OSU students.)
The BNC has an extensive textbook library, where students can check out books for an entire term. They also lend out calculators, lab goggles, lab coats and molecular chemistry sets, and offer free black-and-white printing and a couple computers for use on-site.
The center holds regular workshops to teach students how to cook various foods, where to find housing and roommates, how to sign up for SNAP food stamp benefits and more. This fall there will be a workshop on knife skills for cooking and one on tenants’ rights with ASOSU Student Legal Services.
The BNC does not provide housing, but works closely with University Housing and Dining Services, which has a limited number of rooms earmarked for emergency short-term housing, and with other community housing services like Unity Shelter in Corvallis. Peer navigators also refer students to ASOSU Student Legal Services, often for landlord-related questions; the OSU Center for Advancing Financial Education for support with budgeting and learning how to pay for college; the Oregon One system to apply for SNAP benefits, and other available resources and programs.
Sometimes, students may connect with an emergency or short-term service to meet an immediate need and then come back for longer-term planning and budgeting with peer navigators to achieve more permanent stability.
“We’re definitely working inside of resource constraints,” Norris said. “There are times when we’re having conversations and there’s not a tangible resource that fully meets the need. And if someone’s in a complex situation, they’re looking at multiple resources to get their needs met. But the goal is that we create a couple options for a student to still have a choice about what they do and a workable plan for their situation.”
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