A college education can be one of the most valuable things a person can have and it’s becoming more and more popular and available to people across the country. An estimated 6,837,605 students enrolled in 4 year college programs in the United States in 2013. Of course, one of the biggest drawbacks to going to college is the exorbitant cost. One of the biggest being student apartments.

In Chicago, students with housing needs and financial struggles can look to La Casa Student Housing programs, such as The Resurrection Project. A nonprofit that aims to create healthier communities through education, the initiative provides Chicago-area kids with affordable housing programs. One of those students is Dulce Hernandez, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Hernandez lived in the on-campus student housing apartments when she first attended the University of Illinois at Chicago, just like an estimated 50,444 people living in college housing programs. Pretty soon the expenses were to great. She started commuting from home, which was a two-hour trek.

“My grades started to struggle and I actually fainted on campus once,” Hernandez said. “It was just really unhealthy.”

Thanks to La Casa Hernandez was able to find a place to stay much closer to her classes and continue her studies in English and Business Administration. She is one of about 90 taking advantage of the La Casa student housing programs. According to the La Casa outreach representative, Angela Crawford Neven, students who stay there attend a variety of colleges and universities in the Chicago area.

“So initially La Casa was designed to support the neighborhood kid who lives down the street ? but we noticed a lot of students were having similar stories commuting crazy distances,” Crawford Neven said. “They wanted to be involved on campus, get the college experience, to study, succeed and do internships, but all their spare time was taken up by commuting because of the expense of living on campus.”

An estimated 1,439,264 Bachelors Degrees are awarded annually in the United States, according to StatisticBrain. With the costs seemingly set to increase indefinitely, saving money through student housing programs like La Casa will become more and more important from here on out.