Providing access to stable and affordable housing reduces disruptions from involuntary and frequent residential mobility and provides children with consistent learning experiences.

 Providing access to stable and affordable housing reduces disruptions from involuntary and frequent residential mobility and provides children with consistent learning experiences. • Households with low incomes move at more than twice the rate of families with higher incomes, primarily because of housing cost burden, structural and environmental housing problems, neighborhood violence, or foreclosures and evictions.23,24 Families with low incomes who moved into homeownership, however, were 37% less likely to experience subsequent residential mobility than similar families who moved to private-market or subsidized rental housing.25 • Homeowners are less likely to move, given the high transaction costs of reselling, and are more likely than renters to have the funds to provide for a richer educational environment. Stable home environments raise young children’s math and reading test scores, making affordable homeownership a conduit for greater residential stability.26 • The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted socioeconomic inequities for families with low incomes, particularly children’s residential stability and access to online schooling. While research on the impacts of the pandemic on students’ learning loss is ongoing, preliminary results indicate that students from families with low incomes experienced higher levels of stress related to unstable housing, limited access to technology for virtual classes, and lower levels of instructional engagement compared to students from families with higher incomes.27 Impacts of residential instability by age group • Adverse effects of residential instability on educational outcomes span all stages of childhood. Very young children from households with low incomes experience cognitive and behavioral impacts from residential instability, including decreases in their preschool math and reading abilities. Young children who moved three or more times between birth and preschool faced the most significant negative impacts.28 • Children from households with low incomes who move more than once in the early elementary years experience negative reading and math achievement that has long-lasting effects. Children from households with limited income who read below grade level by third grade are six times more likely to drop out of school than their more proficient peers.29 For every residential move a student in a low-income household experienced between kindergarten and second grade, there was a drop in test scores compared with residentially stable students from families with low incomes.30 • For adolescents, frequent and involuntary residential mobility is associated with negative behaviors, including social problems, delinquency, substance abuse and teen pregnancy, which research has shown to be correlated with poor academic achievement.31