Housing, Wellbeing, and Academic Trajectories of Families Participating in a School-Housing Homelessness Prevention Initiative

• In Event: Housing, Neighborhoods, and the Schools Children Attend: Policy Evidence

Abstract

Student homelessness has been increasing in the United States (U.S.) over the past few years. Given the association between housing instability and academic outcomes, there has been growing interest in school-housing partnerships as a way to identify students facing housing instability and link them with services. However, there is little evidence on the effect of these programs on participants’ well-being or on children’s academic outcomes. This study reports on the trajectories of households participating in a novel homelessness prevention program implemented by a school-housing partnership in a large Northeastern U.S. city.  We recruited a sample of 116 households participating in the homelessness prevention program and surveyed them over the phone at three time points: at the time of referral (baseline), and 1- and 2-years later. The school district also shared administrative data on the 196 students in these households. We used mixed effects regressions to test changes in participants’ housing status, parent and child well-being, and child academic outcomes, 1-year and 2-years after enrollment. The models included controls for program, household, respondent, and child characteristics, as well as a household-level random effect to account for clustering of observations within the same household. We also exploited the longitudinal nature of the data by examining how changes in families’ housing status were associated with changes in parent and child outcomes over the study period. Households participating in the program experienced large increases in housing stability. At baseline, approximately 49% of participants were living in their own home (36% were doubled up, and 15% were in a shelter, hotel, or motel). By the two-year time point, 84% were living in their own home, an adjusted increase of 34 percentage points (95% CI [0.24 0.45], P<0.001). In addition, parents in these households reported significantly lower levels of anxiety and depression, and children were 10 percentage points less likely to have internalizing scores above the at-risk cutoff (95% CI [-.19 -0.003], P=0.043). In the survey data, children at the end of the study period were reported to miss, on average, 1.2 fewer days of school in the past month relative to the baseline average of 3 days (95% CI [-2.08 -0.32], P=0.007]. Meanwhile, the school administrative data suggested a 10-percentage point (95% CI [-0.18 -0.02], P=0.014) decline in the rate of chronic absenteeism (relative to a baseline rate of 62%). Within-household analyses suggest that the observed improvements in parent well-being and children’s attendance were associated with households’ increasing housing stability.  This is one of the first studies to examine outcomes for families participating in a homelessness prevention program implemented through a school-housing partnership. While a larger-scale randomized evaluation is needed to more rigorously assess the impacts of the program, our results suggest that this could be a promising strategy to improve students’ housing stability, well-being and academic experiences.  Findings from this study have helped generate support for the program from the school district leadership while also reinforcing philanthropic funding for the social services agency.

Author

• Indrani Saran, Boston College
  Presenting Author