Housing & Schools Resources
The Reciprocal Relationship Between Housing and Schools
Given the common practice of assigning students to neighborhood schools, any serious hope of integrating America’s public education system requires us to consider not only educational policies and practices, but also the demography of neighborhoods and the housing policies that contribute to residential integration or segregation. Most American students live in communities that are dominated by families from one race and socioeconomic status. Public schools typically reflect their neighborhood demographics because most students are assigned to schools based on their residence. These straightforward dynamics underlie the relationship between the integration or segregation of schools and their feeder neighborhoods.
NCSD's Research Briefs synthesize research on the benefits of diverse schools.
In this brief, author Roslyn Mickelson summarizes the social science evidence on the reciprocal relationship between integrated schooling and integrated housing.
From this brief: “The Choice Neighborhoods Initiative is HUD’s signature public housing redevelopment program, designed to respond to critiques of the long-running HOPE VI program by providing one-for-one replacement housing, a guaranteed right to return for residents, and a more holistic focus on the community and schools surrounding the public housing development, with a goal “transform[ing] neighborhoods of poverty into functioning, sustainable mixed-income neighborhoods with appropriate services, schools, public assets, transportation and access to jobs.”
-
HUD/DOE/DOT Joint Letter on Diverse Schools and Communities
-
-
Disrupting the Reciprocal Relationship Between Housing and School Segregation, by Philip Tegeler and Michael Hilton, was originally presented at A Shared Future: Fostering Communities of Inclusion in an Era of Inequality, a national symposium hosted by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies in April 2017. The symposium examined how patterns of residential segregation by income and race in the United States are changing and the consequences of residential segregation for individuals and society, and sought to identify the most promising strategies for fostering more inclusive communities in the years to come.
-
Neighborhood and school integration can help ensure that every student has equitable access to educational opportunities and adequate resources. Living and learning in diverse communities also prepares all students to become effective members of our multiracial democracy. This guide explains how policymakers can consider educational criteria when developing affordable housing under the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program through the state Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP) process, which governs which affordable housing developments are developed each year.
In this essay, excerpted from the AIR Equity Initiative: Integration and Equity 2.0, New and Reinvigorated Approaches to School Integration, PRRAC's Philip Tegeler explains why "Housing mobility programs have a significant, but underutilized, potential to support school integration by providing access to high-performing, low-poverty schools for lowincome children of color."
Video Link: Recognizing the enormously important role REALTORS® play in influencing the community’s view of public schools, the Pasadena-Foothills REALTORS® worked in partnership with the Pasadena Educational Foundation to create an innovative program to equip REALTORS® with current public school information and to become active ambassadors for local public schools.
Member Resources
Poverty and Race Research Action Council (PRRAC)
The Poverty and Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) is a civil rights law and policy organization whose mission is to promote research-based advocacy strategies to address structural inequality and change the systems that disadvantage low-income people of color. Its advocacy work focuses primarily on housing and education policy, but also touches on land use, and the interconnections between housing policy and education, health, and transportation. PRRAC is unique in its focus on policies that address structural segregation directly.
Bridges Collaborative
Housed at The Century Foundation, the Bridges Collaborative's mission is "to dramatically increase the number of students attending diverse, integrated, rigorous and inclusive schools by: fostering authentic collaboration among school and housing partners pursuing integration, providing strategic support to practitioners using research and policy, and influencing the national dialogue on school integration."