How schools used pandemic relief funds to identify and serve students experiencing homelessness

The researchers found that districts that were most effective at identifying students experiencing homelessness used a housing questionnaire at the start of every school year and anytime a parent or teacher reported a change in a student’s home address.

The findings offer unique insights into which strategies are most effective for schools across the country to identify and serve students experiencing homelessness.

In 2020, the number of students that schools identified as homeless dropped drastically, despite record-high unemployment and increased hardship across the country as the economy shut down due to the pandemic. The move to virtual learning prevented schools from knowing who was experiencing homelessness and created challenges to staying in touch with these families and students, the findings showed.

Analysis by Poverty Solutions at U-M and SchoolHouse Connection called attention to this trend and informed the allocation of an extra $800 million for school homelessness services in the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act. The American Rescue Plan-Homeless Children and Youth funds dramatically expanded the number of school districts nationally that received dedicated dollars to identify and support children experiencing homelessness.

Identifying when students are experiencing homelessness is the critical first step in providing those students with resources to ensure they can continue to fully participate in school, as required by federal law. Seeing an increase in the number of students identified as homeless is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s worse if students without a stable place to live go unnoticed and unassisted.”

Jennifer Erb-Downward, director of housing stability programs and policy initiatives at Poverty Solutions at U-M

Erb-Downward co-authored a policy brief that offers recommendations for how schools can improve their identification of students experiencing homelessness based on interviews with 18 school homelessness liaisons in New York. SchoolHouse Connection and the New York State Education Department supported the research.

To learn more about how schools used the funds and what helped them successfully identify students experiencing homelessness, Poverty Solutions researchers sorted school districts in New York – outside of New York City – by how many students they identified as experiencing homelessness. They reached out to school homelessness liaisons from three categories of school districts:

• Districts with good identification, which meant they were in the top quartile in the state for the percentage of students identified as experiencing homelessness.
• Districts with low identification, which were defined as having a high child poverty rate but identifying fewer students as experiencing homelessness than the statewide average.
• Districts with no identification, which meant the district did not identify any students as experiencing homelessness and enrolled more than 1,000 students. It is highly unlikely that a district would not have any students experiencing homelessness, so this is a sign the district is missing a system to identify them.

Training bus drivers to work with school homelessness liaisons and identify students who don’t have a stable place to live was another important factor.

“Bus drivers are often the first to notice if students do not show up at their usual pick-up location or when families may be dropping off children at their usual stop but no longer appear to be living there,” said John Bulat, data and policy analyst at Poverty Solutions, who co-authored the policy brief.

It’s important for school homelessness liaisons to build trust among partner organizations and with families, who often worry about disclosing lack of adequate housing, the researchers noted.

“School homelessness liaisons who had approval to use ARP-HCY funds to provide flexible cash for families—such as gas cards and store gift cards—noted the importance of those interactions. Providing direct resources needed by families opened the doors of communication and trust,” said William Lopez, a clinical associate professor of health behavior and health equity and senior advisor at Poverty Solutions, who co-authored the policy brief.

The researchers found the following trends in how school districts structure their homelessness services:

• Smaller districts with good identification of students experiencing homelessness tend to have a high-ranking administrator who serves as the homelessness liaison and is dedicated to training every level of staff on how to spot signs of homelessness.
• Larger school districts with good identification have a network of people at every school with the support of a senior district administrator to actively engage in identification and outreach.
• School districts with lower identification tended to have homelessness liaisons who fulfilled several other roles and lacked the authority to create a network of support across the district.
• Among districts that identified no students experiencing homelessness, even basic contact information for a homelessness liaison was not available.