Low-income families living in disinvested areas are more likely to live in unstable housing. Their living situations are often characterized by overcrowding, disrepair, and decreased affordability and safety. Such families move frequently, not necessarily to better their situation, but because circumstances offer no other choice. Financial stress forces families to make housing tradeoffs – sacrificing quality, security, and livability in exchange for affordability. This results in insecure housing situations for many low-income Americans.
This excessive residential mobility or housing “churn” experienced by families in precarious socioeconomic circumstances is called hypermobility, and it has far-reaching effects on children, their parents, schools, and communities. This brief highlights the problems that result from hypermobility including those related to health and educational outcomes for individual children, the schools they attend, and communities at large.
Click below to download the policy brief.
Read the other briefs in this series:
Food for Thought: Food insecurity undermines learning outcomes and academic success