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How Housing Affects Child Well-Being
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Vandivere, Sharon Hair, Elizabeth C. Theokas, Christina Cleveland, Kevin W. McNamara, Michelle M. Atienza, Astrid |
| Copyright Year | 2006 |
| Abstract | Abstract Families want to live in homes and neighborhoods that will get their children off to the best possible start. Yet high housing costs in many parts of the country complicate housing decisions, as families must weigh tradeoffs among cost, housing quality, and location. Poor and low-income families likely face the greatest constraints on their housing choices. To make matters worse, poor or low-income children tend to fare worse in other areas such as health or cognitive development. These children, who are already some of the most vulnerable in America, are also the most likely to suffer from housing-related problems. This paper examines how the characteristics of children's homes affect their health, social, and emotional well-being and offers strategies for funders concerned with improving outcomes for children. Housing characteristics can include the cost of housing, residential mobility, and the surrounding neighborhood. These housing characteristics are also interrelated, as high housing costs may affect the physical condition of the home that a family is able to afford and the income-level of the neighborhood in which that house is located. Further, housing conditions—specifically housing cost—have an effect on parenting, which can in turn affect a child's development. Children facing one housing problem typically face multiple risky housing circumstances—as well as additional risky circumstances stemming from poverty—that threaten an array of child outcomes. And experiencing multiple unfavorable housing conditions can intensify the negative effects that such conditions have on a child's physical, emotional, and cognitive development. Yet the situation is not hopeless. Programs that use broad approaches to target a wide range of housing problems can help a child's well-being by using one of the following methods: • Rehabilitating physical features of dilapidated homes and improving the resources of socio-economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. • Reducing the burden of housing costs for families. • Providing support and educational services for parents that will improve their well-being, and thus reduce the negative impacts of parents' psychological distress on their children. • Providing services that will directly enhance children's physical, cognitive, and social development—such as after-school or mentoring programs—as part of larger housing program. Further, though there is still a need for rigorous evaluation of existing housing programs, the research that is available on existing large-scale housing programs suggests that children do benefit, as outlined by the following examples: • Funding for lead control and enforcement of lead abatement policies can reduce children's exposure to lead, which can otherwise permanently impair a child physically, emotionally, and cognitively. • Children in public housing may live in better housing than their families would otherwise be able to obtain and do better than children in families with similar incomes who do not live in public housing. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.fundersnetwork.org/files/learn/Housing_and_Child_Well_Being.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
