This article is part of the Under the Lens series
Street Blocks to Alphabet Blocks: The Housing-Education Connection
When Shelterforce’s publisher, Schlonn Hawkins, came to the publication four years ago, we were discussing all the intersections between our primary focus—housing and community development—and related topics, like transportation, racial justice, and environmental justice. Having worked in the education space before coming to Shelterforce, she noted how education should be on that list—and she was surprised at how infrequently the two were discussed together, given how closely they are intertwined.
She was, of course, absolutely right. Though we did publish a special issue on school reform in 2016, it focused more on the hot-button topic of charter schools. Since then, the pandemic has brought connections between housing, health care, and education to the forefront of many people’s minds, as disparities in access to safe places to live and educational resources at home became major concerns.
After all, the connections really are close.
Housing instability, such as evictions or even frequent moves, makes it hard for children to learn. Two or more school changes between grades 4 and 8 leads to a significant decrease in likelihood of graduation, separate from the effects of poverty. Eviction filings reduce school attendance for as much as two years, and one study of a cohort of 9 year olds showed that an eviction in the previous year was associated with performing a full year behind on measures of memory, math, and vocabulary.
In addition, poor housing conditions of any kind, such as leaking roofs, mold, noise, and overcrowding, affect educational outcomes for multiple reasons. They affect children’s health, increase parental stress, and leave students without places to focus on schoolwork. Poor housing quality (separate from affordability or instability) was associated with more behavioral challenges for younger children, and lower scores on standardized achievement tests for older children.
Widespread housing instability affecting large portions of students will in turn affect the schools they attend or have attended. Schools, for better and worse, absolutely affect families’ decisions to move to or stay in a neighborhood, and what it costs to do so. Ironically, but unsurprisingly, I have been hearing of multiple neighborhoods that replaced low-enrollment schools with high-cost housing whose residents are now leaving the neighborhood again because there is no school.
Stable, healthy, decent affordable housing sets kids up for learning, and allows schools to be able to focus on what they do best. And strong, supported schools with the resources they need can be anchors for communities during the school day and outside of it.
In our new Under the Lens series—Street Blocks to Alphabet Blocks: The Housing-Education Connection—we look at the many ways the movements for educational justice and housing justice overlap, and how the work to provide healthy neighborhoods and the work to create strong schools could intersect even more strongly.
We explore some of the reasons it’s challenging for these two spheres to work together, but we’ll also lift up many stories of groups making it work. We look at collaborations on advocacy work, such as education advocates joining a campaign to pass anti-eviction funding, and at cities organizing to better coordinate school facilities planning with neighborhood needs. We report on teacher-specific affordable housing efforts, rapid rehousing programs for college students, community development organizations that work within the schools, and affordable housing organizations that offer supplemental educational programs.
I hope you find these stories as heartening as I do.
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The Community Opportunity Alliance’s Grounding Values in Research project revealed just how many community-based development organizations provide some sort of service – 96%!! More than half of those organizations offer education & training and/or youth services.
We don’t talk about this cross-sector work nearly enough for how much it is happening on the ground. This conversation is long overdue, and I’m grateful to Shelterforce for prioritizing it!