Leveraging Housing Policy to Reduce Educational Inequality

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Housing policy is increasingly recognized as a crucial but underutilized lever in addressing educational inequality. Decades of research show that where children live—shaped by residential segregation, neighborhood conditions, and income inequality—profoundly impacts their access to educational opportunity. Yet education and housing policy are too often treated as distinct policy domains. This panel brings together four papers that examine how housing-related policies and conditions influence educational outcomes and opportunities, offering new insights into the need for cross-sector approaches to help reduce persistent educational disparities.

The panel showcases a diverse set of policy contexts and methodological approaches, reflecting the complexity of the housing-education nexus. Collectively, the papers examine both federal and local interventions, highlight intended and unintended consequences, and emphasize the importance of integrating housing and education strategies.

The first paper will set the stage for the panel by exploring how school districts are responding to housing instability. Through a policy scan of local, state, and federal initiatives and in-depth policy analysis, the study identifies how policies are working to support students who are experiencing housing instability, with a focus on eviction and homelessness prevention, rather than support only after students experience housing instability.

The next paper takes a causal approach, examining the educational impacts of housing nuisance ordinances, which penalize residents for perceived disorder or criminal activity and often lead to eviction or displacement. Using administrative data and quasi-experimental methods, the authors assess how exposure to these ordinances affects student academic outcomes, offering new evidence on the educational costs of punitive housing policy.

The last two papers focus on different dimensions and sites of the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI), a federal housing redevelopment program aimed at transforming distressed neighborhoods. One study investigates how families’ social networks support their children’s educational opportunity in the midst of significant changes to their housing and neighborhood during CNI implementation in Detroit, with a focus on the mechanisms through which social networks shape educational outcomes and the ways in which housing interventions may reshape social networks. Using a mixed-methods approach, the authors draw on interviews and surveys to understand families’ experiences navigating educational options. A second paper offers a quantitative analysis of the effects of CNI case-management on educational outcomes for students in Memphis, TN. The authors find that CNI resulted in better discipline and attendance outcomes for students.

Together, these studies reveal the deep interdependence between housing and education policy. They underscore the urgent need for policy solutions that are both cross-sector and equity-driven, and they demonstrate how methodological diversity—ranging from qualitative interviews to causal inference—can illuminate different dimensions of the housing-education connection. This panel will be of interest to scholars and policymakers seeking to understand and address the structural roots of educational inequality.

Policy Area

• Education

Secondary Policy Area

• Housing, Community Development, and Urban Policy

Chair

• DeMarcus Antonio Jenkins, University of Pennsylvania

Discussants

• Joseph L. Boselovic, Johns Hopkins University

• Terris Raiford Ross, American Institutes for Research

Organizers

• Sarah Winchell Lenhoff, Wayne State University

• DeMarcus Antonio Jenkins, University of Pennsylvania

Individual Presentations

• Harmonizing Systems to Reduce Eviction and Homelessness: An Environmental Scan of Innovative School-Housing Partnerships - Presenting Author: Tara Blagg, University of Southern California

• Creating a nuisance? Housing nuisance ordinances and their impacts on student outcomes - Presenting Author: Mark Junxuan Chin, Vanderbilt University

• Making the Case? Unpacking Family Case Management Effects and School Effects in Neighborhood Redevelopment Initiatives - Presenting Author: Jason Jabbari, Washington University in St. Louis

• Social Capital in the Shadow of Redevelopment: Navigating Education in Changing Neighborhoods - Presenting Author: Margaret Dawson-Amoah, University of Southern California; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Sarah Winchell Lenhoff, Wayne State University; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Huriya Jabbar, University of Southern California; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Ayana Cheyenne Colvin, University of Pennsylvania; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Kara Finnigan, University of Michigan Ann Arbor; Non-Presenting Co-Author: DeMarcus Antonio Jenkins, University of Pennsylvania