NYC Public Schools opened its doors to hundreds of thousands of students across the five boroughs last week. Unfortunately for many students, the end of the first school day meant returning to a shelter, hotel, or a home that was not their own.
Every year since 2015, more than 100,000 students in NYC public schools have qualified as students in temporary housing. The majority of them are Black and Hispanic, and the number has only grown in recent years. Student housing, as we explored with the release of NYC’s first Racial Equity Plan, reports about Black unemployment and outmigration, and ongoing discussions about poor reading and math scores, does not exist in a silo.
This week we’re examining what kind of city we are building when so many young people don’t have a stable place to call home, and how we can address the problem.
Let’s dive in.
Jared Giles
Founder, SquareOne
[email protected]
We Are Failing Students
In workforce development conversations, we often highlight how much untapped talent lives within New York City. Discussions, rightfully, underscore the brilliance and capability of young New Yorkers, and billions of dollars are spent educating and training them to ensure they have the skills and experience needed to lead fulfilling lives. But what can we say about our city, and our efforts to develop talent, if year-over-year we allow almost 100,000 young people to live without a permanent home?
Students in temporary housing (STH) are some of the most vulnerable individuals in the city and, across the board, their development suffers:
Attendance: 52% of STH (and 67% of students in shelters) are chronically absent from school (miss 18+ days).
Proficiency: Reading and math proficiency for students in shelters is 22% compared to 52% and 54% for permanently housed students.
Graduation & Dropouts: For STH, high school graduation drops to 62% with a 12.5% dropout rate. The graduation and dropout rates for NYCPS overall are 82% and 5% respectively.
Demographics: Black and Hispanic students make up about 85-90% of the STH population.
According to the Center for Innovation through Data Intelligence, unhoused NYC high school students who do not graduate in 4 years are 2.3 times more likely to experience homelessness again as young adults compared to those who earn their diploma.
“If you took every student in New York City who experienced homelessness at some point [in the 2024-25] school year and combined them into a single school district, it would still be one of the 20 largest in the entire country.” - Sahalie Donaldson
While the influx of asylum seekers increased the number of students without a permanent home over the last few years, the trend was already moving upward. The 2024–25 school year marked the 10th year in a row that “more than 100,000 students did not have a permanent place to call home.” Every year, more than 10% of New York City students are in temporary housing. That is not an accident or an oversight. It is a gross moral failure of a system we designed and have yet to change.
The Racial Equity Plan offers some guidance on how individual agencies will be held accountable for building on-ramps into permanent homes, to increase STH participation in SYEP, and for connecting families to necessary resources to reduce their shelter stays. But this problem calls for a more tailored solution.
Can New York City’s housing, education, social services, healthcare, and workforce agencies and organizations come together to create a shared goal and strategy to ensure no student lives outside of a permanent home? Can we draft creative policy solutions that prioritize funding a family’s basic needs? We cannot expect a young person to think about “economic mobility” if they don’t know where they are going to sleep at night. So how can we work across agencies to take care of families and prevent young people from falling through the cracks as they navigate the housing system?
National Spotlight: Maryland’s Community Schools
How do we build a blueprint that tries to address housing instability and educational needs under the same umbrella? Let’s start with Maryland’s recent legislation connecting its $572 million Community Schools expansion directly to targeted rental and housing assistance:
The Problem: Like most government systems, housing and education agencies in Maryland operated in silos. When students and their families faced eviction, or were living in a shelter, schools were left to manage the consequences, like chronic absenteeism and severe learning loss, without any authority to address the issues outside of the school building.
The Intervention: Maryland housing and education advocates passed legislation that directs state housing stability funds through Community Schools. Using Community School Coordinators who interact daily with vulnerable families, schools become triage centers. Coordinators identify families at immediate risk of eviction or homelessness and connect them to state rental subsidies and emergency housing funds.
The Takeaway: Maryland demonstrates that, when given the right resources and funding, schools can aid in the student housing crisis. Integrating rental assistance into school infrastructure stabilizes families before they lose housing, keeping children in the classroom, and protecting student achievement.
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