HOUSTON (AP) – Since her birth ten years ago, Mackenzie Holmes has rarely called one place for a long time.
In Houston there was a home owned by her grandmother Crystal Holmes. Then there was a trio of apartments in the suburbs after Holmes lost his job and home on Southwest Airlines – and three Escape. Then another rental and another eviction. Later, Mackenzie and grandmother slept on an inflatable mattress in the motel and in my uncle’s one-bedroom apartment. Finally, Crystal Holmes secured a spot at the women’s shelter, so the two no longer needed to sleep on the floor.
With almost every move, there have been a new school, a new set of classmates, and new lessons to catch up. Mackenzie has only one known friend for over a year and has not been tested or diagnosed. Dyslexia Until this year. She will often miss long classes between schools.
Schoolchildren who are threatened with eviction are more likely to end up in another district or move to another school, often with fewer funding, more poverty and lower test scores. They are likely to do so Miss SchoolAnd he’s the one that’s going to transfer. Paused More often. This was featured in the Sociology of Education, Peer Reviewed Journal, and is only shared with the Associated Press Education Reporting Network, according to an analysis by Princeton University’s Viction Lab.
Pairing student records with court applications from the Houston Independent School District, where Mackenzie began kindergarten, has identified more than 18,000 times between 2002 and 2016 when students were threatened with eviction applications while living in a residential area. They found that students facing eviction are absence More often. Even if there was no need to change schools, students threatened to miss out on four days of the following school year than their peers.
Overall, the researchers counted 13,197 children between 2002 and 2016, whose parents faced submissions of eviction. A quarter of those children faced repeated evictions.
As Houston’s eviction rate continues to deteriorate, there may be more kids like Mackenzie.
Lazy to rent – and find a way to finish the school year
Neveah Barahona, the 17-year-old sister of seven siblings, started kindergarten in Houston, but moved five times from school. Her mother, Roxanne Abarka, knew that the movement was destructive. So whenever she was behind the rent and forced her family to move, she tried to get them to finish the school year, even if it meant they would run them.
Nebea, a powerful student who wants to join the military, said the movement was sacrificed.
“It’s kind of like getting off the drain, meeting new people, meeting new teachers, getting back on track with what they want to teach you and what you know,” Nebear said. Then I’m finding a way with my new classmates. This year’s bullying Smart left her disappointment until she received counseling.
Households with children are about twice as likely to face evictions as households without children, Eviction Lab research shows. It expels 1.5 million children each year, and 1 in 20 people under the age of five live in rental homes. Still, much of the discourse focuses on adults (landlords and adult tenants), not children who were caught in the middle, but said Peter Hepburn, the study’s lead author.
“It’s worth reminding people that 40% of people at risk of losing their homes throughout the eviction process are children,” said Hepburn, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University-Newark and associate director of Viction Lab.
Households often become more vulnerable to eviction because they are behind I have a child. Only 5% of low-paid earners, particularly vulnerable to housing instability, can take paid parental leave.
Under federal law protecting homeless students, districts are expected to provide daily transport and try to keep their children in the same school if they lose their home in the middle of the year. However, children who are evicted are not always eligible for those services. Even people often go through the cracks, as schools don’t know why the kids are leaving or where they are heading.
Evicted families navigate the boundaries of invisible schools
At Sprawl in Houston, it is particularly challenging that temporary students are on track. Metropolis is bleeding seamlessly from city restrictions to unincorporated portions of Harris County, which are divided into 24 other districts. It’s easy to leave without realizing the Houston school district. And despite the best efforts of parents and caretakers, children can miss out on many schools in the transition.
That’s what happened in January when Mackenzie’s grandmother was desperately trying to stay in her son’s one-bedroom apartment with her granddaughter. Fearing that her son would be kicked out by staying with his family, Crystal Holmes (no home, no car or cell phone service) walked miles to the women’s shelter.
The shelter where she and Mackenzie currently share the room is located in a registration zone in another district. She was worried that Mackenzie was being forced to move out of school again – the fifth graders had already missed the first three weeks of her grandmother’s school year. I had a hard time registering her.
Thankfully, federal law began, and Mackenzie’s school, Thornwood Elementary School, is currently driving to take her and other students from shelter.
The Houston Independent School District did not respond to requests for interviews.
Millicent Brown lives in a public housing project in Houston and along with the highway, he had to buy a noisy doorbell. She and her daughter, Nova, 5, were forced to move last year when Nova’s father threatened to hurt Brown.
Nova attended charter school. But when she moved, the school said that if Brown waited just as he said it was too dangerous, only a busnova could be made from her new home. Instead, Nova missed a month’s school before enrolling in a nearby public school.
The brown bouncing between schools, hoping for a better desire for Nova. But she may have to move again. The state has plans to expand the highways. It will wipe out her housing projects and Nova’s new school.
Almost three years ago, Neveah and her family settled in a ranch-style home down the country roads of Aldine. It has four bedrooms and a renovated kitchen, brightly lit. Neaveah adopted a neighbor cat named Bella. Her sister Aaliyah painted a portrait of the house on display in the living room.
“When we were little, we kept moving all the time,” Aaliyah said. “I don’t want to move in. I’m already comfortable here.”
Then last year, her mother began to fall behind rent once again. Eventually, Abarka received an eviction notice.
My mother was lucky. At the court, she met an employee tasked with helping the family stay at their home. The employee connected her with a nonprofit that agreed to pay six months of rent while Abarka was back at her feet.
And she worked from home as a call operator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
However, the dream of the brothers in the “Eternal House” may still be over. Abarka learned this month that the homeowners want to sell to investors and drive them away again.
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