Housing, Neighborhoods, and the Schools Children Attend: Policy Evidence

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Where students live profoundly shapes where and how they go to school, but the mechanisms linking residence to schooling are multiple and often studied in isolation. Much of the literature on housing and education treats these domains separately, inferring educational effects from neighborhood characteristics without directly observing the school-level processes that translate residential context into educational outcomes. This panel brings together four papers exploring how housing policy, housing stability, institutional rules, and neighborhood structure each shape children's educational opportunities.

The first paper examines how Housing Choice Vouchers affect students' school mobility and access to school quality in Houston. Using linked administrative records from the Houston Housing Authority and the Texas Education Agency, and a staggered difference-in-differences design, the paper identifies two key findings. First, voucher receipt causes a sharp rise in non-structural school moves in the treatment year, followed by a persistent decline; structural moves are unaffected. Second, voucher-induced movers attend higher value-added schools, identifying a school-quality channel that neighborhood-proxy studies have been unable to isolate. These findings speak to how federal housing assistance can reshape children's educational environments in ways aggregate test-score evaluations may miss.

The second paper evaluates a homelessness prevention program implemented through a school-housing partnership in a large Northeastern city. Drawing on three waves of surveys and linked school administrative records, the paper documents gains in housing stability, improvements in parent and child well-being, and reductions in chronic absenteeism over two years. Within-household analyses suggest these gains are driven by housing stabilization itself, offering early evidence on how school-housing partnerships can support students facing housing instability.

The third paper examines how school districts change assignment policies after the release of court-ordered desegregation plans, and how those changes affect school segregation. Using originally-collected archival data from two large U.S. school districts released from court oversight in the 1990s, the paper applies gerrymandering measures to attendance zone maps to compare districts with diverging institutional responses. The paper shifts attention from the demand side of segregation—families' residential and schooling choices—toward the institutional actors whose decisions shape the opportunity structures families navigate.

The fourth paper asks a foundational measurement question: how much of what appears to be a school effect is actually a neighborhood effect? Using public data from the School District of Philadelphia and the American Community Survey, and replicating in New York City, the paper models observations as nested within schools within neighborhoods, showing that neighborhoods account for 36–47 percent of achievement variance and that school-level estimates are inflated when neighborhoods are omitted. The paper offers both a methodological framework and an empirical argument for treating neighborhoods as a formal level of educational organization.

Together, these papers trace four complementary dimensions of the housing-schools relationship: residential mobility through housing assistance, housing stability through homelessness prevention, institutional policy shaping school assignment, and neighborhoods as a structural level of educational context. They offer policy-relevant evidence on how where families live shapes where and how students learn, speaking to researchers and policymakers across housing, education, and urban policy fields.

Policy Area

• Housing, Community Development, and Urban Policy

Chair

• Anna Rhodes, Rice University

Discussants

• Sarah A. Cordes, Temple University

• Noman Khanani, WestEd

Organizer

• Jiaxin Li, Rice University

Individual Presentations

• Housing Choice Vouchers and School Mobility: Evidence from Houston - Presenting Author: Jiaxin Li, Rice University; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Rui Zeng, Rice University; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Anna Rhodes, Rice University; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Jeremy E Fiel, Rice University; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Hojung Lee, Rice University

• Housing, Wellbeing, and Academic Trajectories of Families Participating in a School-Housing Homelessness Prevention Initiative - Presenting Author: Indrani Saran, Boston College

• Loss of Oversight: How Two Large School Districts Responded to the Release of Court-Ordered Desegregation - Presenting Author: Elly M Field, The University of Texas at Austin

• Neighborhoods as a Level: Decomposing Variance in Urban Student Outcomes in Philadelphia and New York City - Presenting Author: Katherine Jane Strickland, University of Florida