Students Experiencing Homelessness: A Conditional Cash Transfer Pilot

Having inadequate housing has been correlated in research with detrimental effects on a child’s ability to meet their full potential at school.

In partnership with the LANL Foundation (LANLF), Cuba Independent School District (CISD), and West Las Vegas School District (WLVSD), New Mexico Appleseed designed, implemented, and evaluated this intervention to provide educational and financial support to inadequately housed students.

Creating a ‘Compassionate Exception’—New Mexico Appleseed’s innovative concept—allowed for flexibility with the requirements when the reality of highly mobile and under-resourced students’ lives made meeting those requirements difficult. Learn more about this and other key findings of our pilot project in this report (June 2022).

CHILD AND FAMILY HOMELESSNESS

When people think about homelessness they often picture encampments or people staying in an emergency shelter. Yet, that is only a small fraction of the families experiencing homelessness and housing instability in New Mexico. Over 80 percent of children and youth who meet the federal definition of homelessness under federal educational laws are living in homes that are overcrowded or in desperate need of repair, or they lack access to utilities such as running water or electricity. Inadequate housing qualifies as homeless under federal education laws (called McKinney-Vento) because these living situations have a profound impact on children and their ability to learn and thrive.

Appleseed’s work with communities has revealed several challenges around identifying families who may qualify as homeless under McKinney-Vento and connecting them with the extra supports they need. There is deep stigma around housing instability, uncertainty about what supports are available, and fear that housing instability may result in children being removed from the home. Furthermore, some housing situations such as extended families living together are common and offer benefits such as intergenerational ties, in addition to the challenges of overcrowding. Connecting with families in a way that is sensitive and culturally competent requires an investment of time and resources, which are in short supply in many districts around the state.

READ OUR 2021 IMPACT REPORT

INCREASING IDENTIFICATION OF HOMELESS AND HOUSING INSECURE STUDENTS

Improving Identification in Districts Around the State. As COVID-19 kept children out of school, homeless children became even more at-risk of being unidentified and unsupported. Appleseed worked with districts to identify nearly 1,600 inadequately-housed children to help them get the support they need and are entitled to under federal educational law.The mini-grant program led to improved identification of students experiencing homelessness through creative and strategic ways, including payment of transportation expenses to conduct home visits and providing bilingual school staff a stipend to conduct outreach to families in their native language. Outcomes include:

  • 11 mini-grantees increased the number of students they identified

  • Mini-grantees identified 103 more students in 2020-2021 compared to 2019-2020—a 10 percent increase.

Statewide and nationally, identification of students experiencing homelessness was significantly down during the 2020-2021 school year—in large part because of school closures—yet, the evidence suggests that housing instability and homelessness actually increased. The fact that over half of our grantees increased identification during the 2020-2021 school year is a huge success.

Combining Data Sources to Develop a Better Estimate of Youth Homelessness. Due to our deep knowledge of the communities in which we work, Appleseed’s hypothesis is that there are far more students who qualify as homeless under federal educational laws than are identified. The robustness of districts’ outreach and identification efforts are highly variable. To better understand the scope of the problem we are working in partnership with DOH epidemiologists and PED to compare the self-reported homelessness data among middle and high school students from the biennial New Mexico Youth Risk and Resilience Survey with school district reporting of homeless students' data to develop a more accurate snapshot of housing instability. This type of analysis sheds light on the scale of the problem and identifies areas of the state that will benefit from more targeted outreach in 2022.

Developing a Universal Housing Screener.
Our work on a universal housing screener also experienced significant progress. There is no comprehensive data set on the number of students experiencing housing instability in the state and efforts at identification are variable, depending on the district. A universal housing screener will help solve that. Staff worked in partnership with PED’s State Coordinator for the Education for Homeless Children and Youth Program to revise and update student housing screener templates to circulate statewide. The screeners ask about a student’s living situation, including whether the student has access to utilities. As a result of our continued advocacy PED is exploring adding the homelessness questions to existing surveys administered in schools, and some districts have also expressed an interest in piloting the use of the screener. Our goal is to have a consistent approach statewide on housing screeners, where every student is screened using the same form.

SHARING KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERTISE

Statewide Legal and Policy Experts on Homelessness. Appleseed is a state and national thought leader on child and family homelessness. During 2021, we also became experts on federal and state relief funds and the eviction and utility moratoriums. We share our expertise with partners and communities around the state so they can better identify and serve families experiencing homelessness:

  • Provided media outlets background information for multiple in-depth stories covering different aspects of homelessness and evictions.

  • Trained over twenty early childhood intervention social workers on federal education laws that address homelessness, provided resources and presented to hundreds of attendees.

  • Provided technical assistance to dozens of liaisons, state leadership, and school staff on issues including confusion over who qualifies as homeless, emergency housing options for unaccompanied youth in rural communities, and how to access eviction prevention funds.

  • Provided substantive feedback and analysis to the Program Coordinator of Community Schools and Extended Learning at PED on a study they are launching in partnership with J-PAL at MIT and will be providing support throughout the duration of the study.

  • Presented to the NMSU economic development cabinet about how the university can improve outcomes for its high-poverty families and students. 

  • Presented at the Harvard Kennedy Government Performance Lab meeting on cash transfers.

  • Provided support to the Governor’s task force on fiscal and policy implications of free meals for all children.

ADDRESSING BARRIERS THROUGH LEGISLATION AND POLICY

Ensure Free Access to Birth Certificates for Homeless Youth. Through Appleseed’s role on the statewide Education for Homeless Children and Youth Advisory Committee, we worked to develop and advocate for the passage of HB 179, a law to ensure that youth experiencing homelessness can access copies of their birth certificates and that the $10 statutory fee is waived for all individuals experiencing homelessness.

Improve Access to Youth IDs. Through the Education for Homeless Children and Youth Advisory Committee, we worked with the Taxation and Revenue Department (TRD) to clarify that unaccompanied youth can apply on their own for an identification card without a parent or guardian's signature and successfully advocated with TRD to train field office staff on the rights of unaccompanied youth to access IDs.