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Housing Stability for School Success Toolkit

August 2024

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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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  • An Underutilized Housing Affordability Tool: Homestead Exemptions

    CPAL examines homestead exemption access in Dallas County — who’s claiming, who isn’t, and how much money eligible homeowners could realize if they claimed this benefit.

    • ~57K residential properties in Dallas County may be eligible for the homestead exemption but have not yet claimed it, for an estimated total benefit of ~$310M.
    • ~40K properties in low-income and very low-income census tracts in Dallas County may be eligible for the homestead exemption but have not yet claimed it, for an estimated total benefit of ~$200M, or ~$5,000 per household.
    • While an estimated 95% of eligible households in high-income census tracts claim their homestead exemption, only 81% of households in very low-income census tracts claim their homestead exemption.
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  • 2025 Rental Housing Needs Assessment

    The 2025 Rental Housing Needs Assessment establishes a shared fact base on rental affordability, supply, and opportunity in the City of Dallas.

    • Dallas faces a 46,000-unit shortage of rental homes affordable to very low-income households earning ≤50% of Area Median Income (AMI). Since CPAL first published this report in 2023, the gap has grown by more than 12,000 units.
    • Between 2021 and 2023, the number of rental units priced below $1,000 per month was cut in half — a loss of over 50,000 units. Today, 90% of affordable units for low-income renters are unsubsidized and vulnerable to market pressures.
    • Half of all renters spend more than 30% of their income on housing, including 75% of single parents with children and 65% of senior renters. Extremely low-income renters spend, on average, 78% of their income on housing, leaving little room for other necessities.
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  • 2024 Rental Housing Needs Assessment

    2024 Update of CPAL’s Rental Housing Needs Assessment analyzes the growing gap of rental housing supply and demand for low-income families.

    • As of 2022, Dallas had a 39,900 unit gap in affordable rental housing. The shortage of affordable housing units is projected to grow to 76,100 units by 2035, driven by an anticipated loss of 54,000 unrestricted affordable housing units.
    • Despite improvement over time in educational attainment and wages, 49% of all renters in the City of Dallas are housing cost burdened, and some renters are disproportionately affected, including Black renters, senior renters, and single parents with children.
    View Report