From Front Yards to Schoolyards: Linking Housing Policy and School Reform. Working Paper #09-07

Housing and education share strong ties in the United States. This relationship is shaped, in large part, by mobility. Students move to new schools, homes and neighborhoods as a result of planned and unplanned family relocations. Taxpayers move from one school district to another in a nation where school quality is closely tied to the district in which a family resides. Teachers weigh factors such as location, pay, and long-term career opportunities as they decide where to work and when to move within or between school districts. Despite the strong relationship between housing and education, policies that recognize and support this relationship are relatively rare. In this paper, we explore the mechanisms by which housing and education are related. We focus particular attention on disadvantaged students in urban areas, as these students often face a unique set of challenges that set them apart from their more advantaged and/or non-urban counterparts. First, we explore the ways in which a child's housing unit, his neighborhood, and the political economy of public schools might shape his educational outcome. We then turn to a discussion of the implications of these mechanisms for education and housing policy. Herein, we highlight recent efforts to strengthen the ties between education and housing policy and discuss how the lessons learned from these efforts might be brought to bear as policymakers consider new education and housing initiatives.