By Jennifer Jellison Holme, Erica Frankenberg, Joanna Sanchez, et al., Photo: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock, Housing Matters, May 10, 2023
Every year, the federal government distributes billions of dollars to subsidize housing for families with low incomes. These subsidies are distributed through several programs, including housing vouchers, public housing, and Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) for affordable housing developments. Though these subsidies have no direct connection to any educational policy, they can affect the educational outcomes of children assisted by these programs. By determining where families are housed, these subsidies can influence which schools their children are likely to attend. This study examines the relationship between federally subsidized affordable housing and the level of economic and racial segregation found in the schools that subsidized housing developments are zoned to.
Looking at four of the five largest counties in Texas, the authors used data from the Texas Education Agency to map school district boundaries and data from the National Center for Education Statistics to map schools’ attendance zone boundaries. They also used geographic data from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development to identify the locations of two specific forms of subsidized housing, public housing and LIHTC properties, in their target counties. After removing schools without typical attendance zone boundaries, like charter or magnet schools, their dataset included more than 1,600 schools across four counties.
The authors then analyzed the both the racial and economic segregation levels within each school and each school district’s demographic compositions in their dataset. Finally, they compared the demographics and segregation levels in schools and school districts with subsidized housing in their attendance zone against schools and school districts without.
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