School, Neighborhood, and Residential Contexts of Homeless Students in the Los Angeles Unified School District

• In Event: Problems of Practice in Research on Educational Inequalities: Lessons From the Los Angeles Region

Abstract

Urban school districts across the country are educating an increasing number of homeless students (Favot, 2017; Shapiro, 2018). Yet we know little about the contexts that homeless students inhabit, including the types of schools they attend, neighborhoods they reside in, and type of unstable house arrangement they use. Using LAUSD student-level data from 2008-2017, we add to the literature by examining the school, residential, and neighborhood environments of homeless students. Preliminary results suggest that homeless students are more likely to attend low-performing schools with higher numbers of disadvantaged student groups and live in neighborhoods with high rent burdens and overcrowding. We find a number of neighborhood-level predictors and residential contexts are associated with longer and more frequent homeless spells.

Authors

• Tasminda Dhaliwal, Michigan State University

• Soledad De Gregorio, University of Southern California

• Ann Owens, University of Southern California

• Gary Painter, University of Southern California