Housing Stability for School Success Toolkit
Housing stability matters for a child’s mental and physical wellbeing, educational success, and connection to a community. Involuntary displacement leads to greater material hardship for families, poorer health and avoidable healthcare costs for children and their mothers, and negative impacts on children’s academic achievement. Children who experience housing instability can have lower vocabulary skills, grade retention, higher rates of drop-out, and lower educational attainment as adults.
Launched in spring 2021, Housing Stability for School Success is a collaboration between the Child Poverty Action Lab (CPAL) and Dallas ISD to reduce student middle-of school year moves through campus-based housing interventions. The work began as an action research project focused on elementary schools with high rates of middle-of-year moves and located in neighborhoods with historically high eviction filing rates.
Since fall 2021, CPAL has implemented family-centered solutions at two pilot campuses, Elisha M. Pease and J.N. Ervin Elementary Schools, in partnership with school staff and housing-focused nonprofit organizations. CPAL has worked to scale interventions district-wide and bring data to the center of decision-making. Although the toolkit was built based on a pilot project with Dallas ISD, the featured interventions can be implemented in any school or district context.
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North Texas Eviction Project
NTEP empowers providers, agencies, and policymakers with actionable eviction data to support housing stability in Dallas.
- Eviction disproportionately impacts communities of color, and the likelihood of receiving an eviction judgment is highest for mothers with children.
- NTEP has been used to identify eviction "hotspots" - neighborhoods with a high density of eviction filings - to host rent relief pop-up events and to conduct tenant/landlord outreach and education.
Improve Housing Choice Voucher Acceptance
CPAL’s Housing Voucher Acceptance Guide explains Dallas’ voucher ecosystem dynamics and ways to improve HCV acceptance.
- In a 2020 survey of apartment complexes across Dallas, Denton, Tarrant, and Collin Counties conducted by the Inclusive Communities Project, only 7% of respondents reported accepting vouchers.
- Those that benefit most from vouchers are primarily women and BIPOC renters who live below the federal poverty threshold. 15% of the DHA Housing Choice Voucher recipients (~2,400 families) are households with dependent children.
SMU Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center partnership
CPAL and the Deason Center are working to identify leverage points to reduce pretrial detention in Dallas County.
- Because pretrial detention can jeopardize a person’s employment, family stability, housing, and health, charging delays are a major issue for children and families.
- After an arrest, a prosecutor decides whether to file formal charges against an individual. In Texas, prosecutors can take up to 6 months to make that decision, and an arrested person can be held in jail for half of that time.