Students with disabilities more likely to experience homelessness

Key takeaways:

• Students with disabilities are more likely to experience homelessness than peers without disabilities.
• Researchers expect increased rates of homelessness due to economic issues exacerbated by the pandemic.

In the United States, students with disabilities are more likely to experience homelessness than peers without disabilities, but insufficient reporting practices make the full scope of the problem unclear, according to researchers.

“Housing insecurity is a major issue in the U.S. that was brought closer to the forefront because of the COVID‐19 pandemic,” Eric Rubenstein, Phd, ScM, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health, told Healio. “We were interested in whether students with disabilities were more likely to experience homelessness.”

According to Rubenstein, relevant data had not been aggregated in such a way to explain the extent of the issue.

“School districts are required to report the number of students experiencing homelessness with disabilities,” Rubenstein said. “They also separately report the number of total students enrolled and enrolled in special education. We looked for available data from the eastern U.S. and linked the homelessness data to the enrollment data at the district level. We then calculated prevalence of homelessness among disabled and nondisabled students and compared between states.”

Rubenstein and colleagues included all students in the public education system aged 3 to 21 years who have a disability and are experiencing homelessness in Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and across Washington, D.C. They attempted to obtain data from other states, but the data were either not publicly available, or they did not get responses to their requests.

They identified 1,051,701 students as having a disability out of 5,510,704 students enrolled in public schools for the 2019-2020 school year, and 214,062 students who were experiencing homelessness.

They found that 4.7% of students with disabilities experienced homelessness — 58% greater than the percentage of students without disabilities (RR = 1.58; 95% CI, 1.57-1.59).

Rubinstein noted that they were surprised to see relatively little change between the 2018‐2019 and 2019‐2020 school years.

“We had expected to see major differences due to the COVID‐19 pandemic,” Rubinstein said. “However, it is likely that eviction moratoriums and other policies stabilized some of the housing insecurities. It could also be that reporting of homelessness was less accurate due to not seeing the students in person.”

In the study, the authors advocated for improved comprehensive data collection on the state level and proper use of the information to influence policy and allocate adequate educational and housing services.

“The school system is a place where many students receive services,” Rubenstein said. “For children who are double vulnerable — homeless and disabled — it is crucial that they get service that meet their needs. Communication with families and schools to ensure all needs are met is important, as is recognizing that housing is a strong determinant of health.”