How Inequities in Housing Affect Education — and Vice Versa

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As part of the Priced Out of Public Schools: District Lines, Housing Access, and Inequitable Educational Options release, Bellwether asked housing expert Malcom Glenn to weigh in on how finance and inequity in education and housing shortchange millions of students and families across the country.

There’s an old adage in politics, repeated in some form by everyone from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Sen. Tim Scott to President Barack Obama: a person’s ZIP code should not determine their destiny. More often than not, the two factors at the intersection of ZIP codes and social determinants are fair housing and education. Policymakers tend to think of these as separate issues and address them in silos. But from an equity perspective, rarely do you find two issues as inextricably linked — or as generationally interrelated — as housing and education.

Housing is the foundation for much of what comes after in a person’s life — the Urban Institute called it “the first rung on the ladder to economic opportunity,” and the absence of stable housing has significant negative impacts on health outcomes, family well-being, and overall quality of life.

Discrepancies in quality related to both housing and education are unfortunately the result of intentional decisions: just a few of the countless outgrowths of America’s history of racial discrimination. Not all of them show up in concrete, government-backed policies. As author Richard Rothstein writes, much of these discriminatory practices amounted to de facto segregation, where private actors were free to discriminate without any engagement from policymakers. That began a cycle that persists today.

From real estate agents unwilling to sell homes to people of color to discrimination in appraisals to mortgage lenders offering significantly higher interest rates to prospective Black borrowers, racist policies depressed Black wealth creation for generations. As white families in previously more racially diverse neighborhoods were able to favorably engage in the house-buying market, they moved elsewhere, and Black residents maintained significantly less net worth than their white counterparts. Over time, key pieces of infrastructure were at best, neglected, and at worst, purposefully used to further separate, segregate, and subjugate Black families and neighborhoods.

As property values dropped, there was less tax revenue to help fund investment in improving public school quality, widening the gap between high- and low-quality schools. As students at underfunded schools continued to see lower educational attainment, it deterred families from moving to those neighborhoods and further exacerbated plummeting property values in these communities. Without significant growth in property values, families remained stuck in a cycle of limited housing options resulting in limited educational options — the limits of which were passed on from generation to generation. In the past decade, housing costs near high-performing K-12 public schools were more than twice as much as costs near low-scoring public schools, according to a 2012 Brookings Institution report.

Data from recent years shows the results of more than a half-century of policies, neglect, and cyclical marginalization, and it starts at the very beginning of a child’s educational journey and continues as long as they’re in school. According to a 2016 report, there’s an association between lower kindergarten readiness scores and “cumulative exposure to poor-quality housing and disadvantaged neighborhoods.” 

Research from that same year also found that household crowding — defined as having more people living in a home than there are rooms — has a direct impact on educational attainment, particularly during a student’s high school years. And passing rates in virtually every subject are lower for children experiencing homelessness than children in stable housing situations. It’s not just the students who suffer from housing difficulties, either. Increases in teacher pay have been outpaced by rising home prices, making many teachers significantly more likely to depart their jobs in high-cost school districts within just two years. 

Fixing this problem requires addressing the fundamentally interrelated aspects of fair housing and education. Policymakers, education advocates, families, and more should consider a range of solutions, including the following.

It’s these types of efforts that will make housing more equitable in its own right, while importantly creating better educational attainment. And it speaks to a philosophical shift that can and should occur, with a clear recognition of the impact of quality housing policy on good education policy. Too often, a person’s ZIP code still does determine their destiny. It’s only by unraveling the inequitable policies of the past and leveraging smart policies of today that we can provide better futures for America’s schoolchildren.

Malcom Glenn is a fellow at New America’s Future of Land and Housing Program and the director of public affairs at Better, a platform that makes homeownership easier and more accessible. He’s a former national director of communications at the American Federation for Children.