Protections, Assistance, and Services: An Environmental Scan of the School-Housing Partnership Landscape

• In Event: Housing (In)stability and K-12 Schools: New Evidence on Linkages, Impacts on Student Outcomes, and Remedies

Abstract

Over the past several decades, an increasing number of families have been evicted from their homes (Gromis et al., 2022). Eviction does not impact all families equally: an interlocking web of policies has created structural inequities in housing, employment, and geography, leading to enduring, substantial inequalities in eviction risk for low-income Black and Latine families.

Schools play an important role in supporting families that experience or are at risk of eviction. School district policies, programs, and partnerships can connect families to essential resources including counseling, tutoring, and wraparound services, as well as emergency rental assistance, legal aid, and other supports to help them remain in their homes (Levin et al., 2022). As eviction rates increase, there is a need for researchers to document and to identify promising practices to improve collaboration between the housing and education sectors towards eviction prevention for housing insecure families with children.

In this paper, we conduct an environmental scan to identify approaches school districts, states, and federal government agencies have taken to bridge housing and education policy that are specifically focusing on families facing eviction. Our search was guided by two questions:
1. What are the features of past and current district, state, and federal school-housing policies, programs, and partnerships directed towards families at risk of or experiencing eviction?
2. What types of resources do these policies, programs, and partnerships provide for families facing eviction, and what mechanisms do they use to connect families to these resources?
We employed a “formal” environmental scanning method, to map both “current resources and existing gaps” around this issue (Jenkins et al., 2019, p. 854). Our scan consisted of a two-stage search (Jenkins et al., 2019): first we conducted a comprehensive search of published information, including peer reviewed literature, gray literature, news reports, and relevant websites (i.e. policy centers, national and state agencies) using pre-defined search terms; second, we interviewed key informants at the national and state levels. The interviewees were selected based on the first two stages of our search, as well as our own team’s knowledge about key actors in the research and policy landscape (n=10 interviews).
Our scan of the school-housing landscape identified a range of policies, programs, and partnerships to prevent eviction, assist families with rehousing, and minimize the negative impacts of housing insecurity on children and families. Specifically, we identified three categories of school-housing collaboration:
• State and local eviction protections for children and families
• State, local, and school district housing assistance (e.g. short-term rental aid, permanent supportive housing)
• School district services for families (e.g. legal aid, case management) and children (e.g. wraparound services, tutoring and mentoring programs, transportation assistance)

Our environmental scan illuminates the current state of knowledge regarding school-housing partnerships and points to areas meriting further research. Based on our scan, we develop a set of research questions to guide housing and education scholars as they seek to understand how schools can best support families facing the risk of eviction. We also discuss implications for cross-sector policy and practice bridging schools and housing.

Authors

• Huriya Jabbar, University of Southern California

• Jennifer Jellison Holme, University of Texas at Austin

• Ann Owens, University of Southern California

• Daniel Dawer, University of Texas at Austin

• Alejandro Madrigal, University of Texas at Austin

• Tyra Timm, University of Texas at Austin