It’s no real surprise that research shows that affordable housing increases families’ health, security, and well-being.
And now, a new study by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore discovered that another benefit: Kids that live in modest homes perform better on tests.
More specifically, “Families spending about 30 percent of their income on housing had children with the best cognitive outcomes,” Sandra J. Newman, the director of Johns Hopkins Center on Housing, Neighborhoods, and Communities, told Phys.org. “It’s worse when you pay too little and worse when you pay too much.”
The study, whose findings are reported in the Journal of Housing Economics and Housing Policy Debate found that when families used more than a third of their income to cover housing expenses — which was the case for 88 percent of the lowest-income families surveyed — they spent less on education boosters such as books, computers, lessons, and trips to museums and performances. The families that spent 20 percent or less on housing tended to live in distressed neighborhoods where the instability impacted the kids’ cognitive performance.
“The markedly poorer performance of children in families with extremely low housing cost burdens undercuts the housing policy assumption that a lower housing cost burden is always best,” Newman said. “Rather than finding a bargain in a good neighborhood, they’re living in low-quality housing with spillover effects on their children’s development.”
When families saw the percentage of income they had to pay to cover their housing decrease, the money they spent on their kids’ enrichment increased. “People are making trade-offs,” study researcher C. Scott Holupka told Phys.org, “and those trade-offs have implications for their children.”
MORE: These Seniors Needed Affordable Housing, And These Kids Needed Love. Together, They’re Beautifully Solving Both Problems.
Tag: affordable housing
These Seniors Needed Affordable Housing, and These Kids Needed Love. Together, They’re Beautifully Solving Both Problems
In Portland, Ore., there’s an idea so innovative that it has managed to bring together two sets of people with different problems — and solve them for both.
Welcome to the Bridge Meadows housing development, which helps elders and kids by providing a supportive environment for families that adopt foster kids alongside 27 units of affordable housing for seniors who agree to pitch in for 10 hours a week to help out with the kids. It’s a solution to a problem you don’t hear about often on the news: According to the PBS News Hour, 15 percent of seniors in America live below the poverty line, which often makes them struggle to find affordable housing. Meanwhile, families who adopt foster children face their own difficulties, as they are pressed for time, money and support.
Jackie Lynn, 60, is in the process of adopting her niece’s children because both of their drug-addicted parents are in jail. She works full time and felt she wasn’t able to give the kids the attention they needed until they moved to Bridge Meadows. Her family is partnered with neighbors Jim and Joy Corcoran, the “elders” who volunteer to spend time with the kids. “They are the reason that we thrive,” Lynn told Cat Wise of the PBS NewsHour. “Jim takes the boys every Sunday morning for about three hours. And they come home excited, with all these wonderful stories. You see children running up to them and giving them hugs. It’s just incredible to watch it.”
Meanwhile, the Corcorans experienced financial trouble after Jim lost his construction job, but now they live comfortably at Bridge Meadows with a $500 monthly rent payment. Joy Corcoran told Wise, “It was really difficult to find any decent housing that we could afford in any regard. And so when we had the opportunity to move here, it was just a godsend. It was like a huge relief.”
Bridge Meadows is funded by rents and donations from corporations and the community, and it provides a myriad of ways for kids and elders to interact every week. Elders lead story times, teach music lessons, tutor kids in school subjects, give them lifts to school and more. Derenda Schubert, the executive director of Bridge Meadows, said that there have been a few families who moved in and found the togetherness a bit too much, but for most of them it’s a perfect fit, and several seniors reported that their health improved through so much interaction. “Connections across the generations is critical, absolutely critical for aging well,” Jim Corcoran told Wise.
Plenty of people agree with Jim — which is why another intergenerational housing development like Bridge Meadows is currently under construction in Portland. But there’s good news for those who don’t live in Oregon, too: The staff of Bridge Meadows is consulting with people across the country who want to start their own such housing projects.
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Introducing the Nonprofit Whose Mission Is to Help High School Dropouts and the Homeless
Back in the 1990s, Dorothy Stoneman had big dreams. Not only did she want to help high-school dropouts and unemployed young people, but she also wanted to reach out to poor people in need of housing. So what did she do? She started YouthBuild U.S.A. in 1998, a non-profit that works to solve all of these problems simultaneously.
Today, YouthBuild U.S.A. has grown far beyond its humble beginnings: Now, it has 264 programs in 46 states and 120,000 young people have signed on with the non-profit to build 22,000 units of affordable housing since 1994.
YouthBuild works like this: Its programs across the country recruit unemployed young people ages 16 to 24 (many of whom don’t have high school diplomas). As they learn to build houses and apartment buildings for the homeless and low-income families, participants must also attend an alternative school to earn their diplomas or a G.E.D. They alternate one week working construction with one week in the classroom until they achieve these goals. Meanwhile, the young people learn leadership skills and can obtain counseling and mentoring. When they complete the program, they’re matched with job opportunities.
In an article for Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship Stoneman wrote about Xavier Jennings, a program participant who’d turned his life around and shared his story at the Aspen Ideas Festival in 2012. As a teenager, Jennings was living in Denver with his grandmother, who lost her food stamps because she was too ill to travel to the office to renew them. To make ends meet, he started dealing drugs. Then at age 18 he heard about Mile High Youth Corps’ YouthBuild program, and for the first time experienced the people in his community treating him with respect rather than as a threat.
“I used to be a hoodlum,” Stoneman writes that many participants say, “Now I am a hero.” She continues, “We need to invest in the education, well-being, inspiration, and character development of every young person born, including those who were born into poverty through no fault of their own. They will grow up to be responsible, productive, caring citizens if society recognizes their value and invests in opportunities for them to realize their full potential.”
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Tricked Out Zero-Energy Homes Aren’t Just for the Rich and Famous
When you think of modern homes with solar panels and award-winning green designers, you probably imagine they’d be constructed somewhere in Beverly Hills or Malibu. But three net-zero energy homes have been built in a Los Angeles zip code you probably wouldn’t imagine — South Central, a notoriously disadvantaged area in the city.
As Jetson Green reports, notable green design studio Minarc, Habitat for Humanity, and the non-profit Restore Neighborhoods LA (RNLA) have built three modern and environmentally friendly homes in one of the poorest neighborhoods of LA. These prefabricated homes take up much less time, money and manpower to assemble thanks to Minarc’s interlocking panel system, called mnmMOD. In fact, these 3-bedroom homes — with sizes around 1,200 to 1,375 square feet — were erected in three short days, when traditional construction for homes this size would take around two weeks.
According to a property listing, these homes are completely net-zero, as the energy that they consume are offset by solar panels and a thermal wall system. The homes also feature a drought tolerant landscape, vegetable gardens, sustainable bamboo floors and other green features.
MORE: Will This Be the Largest Energy-Free Building in the World?
The three homes are expected to sell between $300,000 to $325,000 (which is relatively cheap for a new home in Los Angeles). But not just anyone can swoop up these properties. According to Jetson Green, a potential buyer’s income has to be below 120 percent of the area median income for the Los Angeles metropolitan area. They also have to go through a home buyer education program in advance.
When 6.5 million low-income families spend more than 50 percent of their incomes on housing and utility costs, sustainable solutions are necessary to help keep roofs over heads. As John Perfitt, executive director of RNLA explained to Dwell.com, “We think that good design and new construction methods can, over time, have a very positive influence on restoring neighborhoods.” When it comes to sustainable homes, you don’t need a lot of green be green.