You've Got a Friend

Having a friend, or more formally, a support system, is something that differentiates poor mothers who don’t slide into homelessness from those who do.

The fifth policy brief from the Institute for Children, Poverty & Homelessness (ICPH) on the characteristics of fragile families who become homeless makes a number of points. But, the key role of family and friends is the one that struck me the most.

If a poor mother has support from family and friends, she will be able to work more, she will earn more, and she will rely less on welfare than those with weaker bonds.

So, why would that be the case?

The safety net of family and friends relieves some of the financial strains of poverty – they help with groceries, diapers, clothing, and rent. Family and friends who can help out in an emergency with child care or transportation make it possible for a poor mom to get to work and can mean the difference between keeping and losing a job.

The picture for poor mothers who have weak or erratic support is bleak. They struggle to get a foothold in the labor market and end up homeless more often than their counterparts with strong support.

It’s hard to prove or disprove, but we’ve always felt that one of the reasons our program is so successful in transitioning families out of homelessness, is that we give them a readymade community of support. The families live together on a single campus. The adults attend life skills classes and mental wellness groups together. The children play and study together in their classes. They meet other people at the same place in their lives and making the same life changes. They watch out for each other’s kids. They give each other rides.

First they have new neighbors and then they have new friends. And, now we know how important those friendships can be.

"Where you are isn't where you're going"

We held an Open House in our Community Room last night. The room was full of resident families, board members, volunteers and staff. We were all chatting and enjoying the atmosphere when one of the residents told his story in a way that reminded each of us why we do this – work for a nonprofit and commit to this mission.

He was a meteorologist for 20 years, when he got an opportunity to go to an internet weather site for $10,000 a year more. He was making $95,000 a year.

You can guess what comes next.

The internet company went bust and shut down.

He tried to get back on as a meteorologist, but no surprise in this economy, he couldn’t find anything.

In the midst of looking for a job, he had some major things happen in his personal life. The worst of which was his wife walked away and left him to raise his beautiful twin boys by himself.

The spiral into homelessness ended when he and the boys were at a homeless shelter that pointed him to our program.

He expressed his gratitude with dignity for the support he and the boys found while he rebuilds their lives together. It has given him the platform to go back to school to become a surgical technician. He will start his final semester next month.

There are lots of ways that his story inspires - the perseverance, the self-determination - but, the most personal for me was in the way he accepted help when he needed it. He will forever be the model for me of accepting a "hand up" with grace, while neither expecting nor depending on it.

I’ll share more of the research from the Institute for Children, Poverty & Homelessness next month, but wanted give you the same gift of inspiration that we all received last night.

I hope you have a wonderful holiday season filled with hope and joy.

What else makes homeless families different than other poor families?

The fourth in the ICPH series on families with young children who become homeless identifies still another trait that distinguishes them from poor families who never become homeless.

How old was mom when she gave birth?

Poor women who never became homeless gave birth when they were older. Mothers who became homeless were around 20; under 20 if they were unmarried and lacked a high school education. Mothers who never became homeless were 22-23.

One of the really unfortunate side effects is the impact on the children of young mothers. They are more likely “to have academic and behavioral problems, to display delinquent behaviors such as truancy and fighting, to be incarcerated, and to initiate early sexual activity and become young mothers themselves.”

Homeless and at risk mothers had children with more partners than those who did not become homeless. Having multiple partners “has become increasingly prevalent, particularly among the poor, minority, and unmarried. This growth is alarming; multiple-partner fertility is associated among both mothers and fathers with relationship instability, decreased rates of marriage, lower social support from friends and family, and higher rates of depression.” Their children exhibit poor physical health and more externalizing behaviors like aggression, defiance, theft, vandalism, etc.

While we see the family when the mother and child or children are older, the homeless children who come through our program show the academic, behavioral and health problems the study describes.

The brief goes on to recommend that policy makers interested in reducing child and family homelessness consider programs promoting responsible family planning. We would add, and promote the value of education, and parenting, and job skills, … The list goes on and on.

Another trait of poor families who become homeless

The third brief from the Institute for Children Poverty & Homelessness series on families with young children who become homeless arrived this month. This one examined the role of family structure.

Only 15% of the mothers who were married when their child was born became homeless in the 5 years of the study. Only 25% of the married mothers were even at risk of becoming homeless.

In contrast 56% of the poor mothers who became homeless and 41% of those who were at risk of homelessness were single. Only 23% of the families that were always stably housed were single.

“Married-parent families benefit from higher earnings and economies of scale as well as greater social and institutional support relative to single-parent families. The economic benefits to marriage are especially relevant for women from poor families. While cohabiting families share some similar characteristics with married-parent families, cohabitation results in the accumulation of fewer economic resources.” In other words, cohabiting couples are poorer.

The study adds an interesting observation just in case you think that marriage will lift poor, single women out of poverty. “Mothers who marry differ from those who remain single in ways that bear direct impact on poverty: They are older, more educated, healthier, and have higher earnings.”

I was surprised to learn that “Children raised in cohabiting households exhibit greater behavioral and emotional problems, lower school engagement, and greater delinquency than those in two-parent married or single-parent households.” They believe it is because cohabitation is less well defined and requires less commitment than marriage. There was no direct explanation of why children in single parent families would have less problems.

More on Fragile Families and homelessness

The Institute for Children, Poverty & Homelessness released their second brief from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study not long ago. Again they are looking at the characteristics that make homeless families different from families that are poor, but do not become homeless. This time they looked at the mother’s education as a factor.

“Compared to mothers who experienced homelessness or were at risk of homelessness, stably housed mothers are both more likely to have attained a high school diploma and less likely to have pursued further schooling.” Who would have guessed it. We always assume that more education will improve your job prospects.

So, what is really happening?

The key is the type of advanced education being pursued. Both the costs and benefits of programs can vary significantly by program type. High cost, vocational or career programs rather than college may create more instability than opportunity. “For profit” colleges have been criticized for their recruiting practices, low graduation rates and poor career placement. So the mother who thinks she’s making life better for her children by enrolling in some programs often ends up a dropout, saddled with significant debt, and no better employment prospects than before.

How sad is that.

Fragile Families

The Institute for Children Homelessness and Poverty (ICPH) sent out a research brief last month called Profiles of Risk: Characterizing Housing Instability. This brief “puts a spotlight on the characteristics that make families who experience homelessness different from poor families who consistently maintain stable housing.”

The research draws on the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS). The FFCWS was designed to understand the lives of children born to unmarried parents, so within 48 hours of birth they interviewed parents of 5,000 children and again when the children were one, three and five years old. The FFCWS showed that compared to married parents, unmarried parents were, among other things, more likely to be poor. The ICPH brief goes on to state “As a result, families in the FFCWS are and economically disadvantaged group, making it an ideal source of information for those interested in homelessness and residential instability.”

The ICPH brief states that “Families facing homelessness are also the most poor of the disadvantaged families in the FFCWS sample; on average they have incomes that are 20% lower than those of poor, stably housed families.”

It goes on to note that “Only 15% of children who experienced homelessness between ages one and five had a mother who was married at their birth. Among poor mothers who maintained stable housing, over half (53%) were married at the child’s birth.”

From the FFWCS “In conclusion, children born to unmarried parents are disadvantaged relative to children born to married parents in terms of parental capabilities and family stability. Additonally, parents’ marital status at the time of a child’s birth is a good predictor of longer-term family stability and complexity, both of which influence children’s longer-term wellbeing.”

Homelessness during the recession

The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) released their Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress (AHAR) on June 14^th. Based on 2010 data, the report showed that homelessness did not increase at the height of the recession, despite the economy.

That seems to fly in the face of logic. So why didn’t it increase?

The National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) believes that stimulus funding to prevent or rapidly end homelessness helped. “The $1.5 billion in stimulus funds, called the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP) offered communities significant new resources to curb homelessness resulting from the recession. The AHAR reports that HPRP funds prevented and ended homelessness for an estimated 690,000 people (my emphasis) in the reporting year, and the program also decreased the length of time people in some areas experienced homelessness.”

As one of the 13 agencies investing HPRP funds to prevent newly at risk families from falling into homelessness in Kansas City, MO, we helped only a small percentage of the 690,000 people helped nationwide. While we kept 125 people from becoming homeless, at an average of 100 families (300-400 people), our waiting list for our transitional housing was the highest it had been in years.

Our experience really isn’t inconsistent with the AHAR report, when you dig down into the subpopulations among the homeless. The number of homeless people in families increased by 6% from 2009 to 2010; 20% from 2007 to 2010.

The NAEH identified the real dilemma in the next couple of years. “Unfortunately, HPRP expires in 2012 and there will not be assistance for those hundreds of thousands of households that are facing homelessness.” … “The federal government is considering deep cuts to domestic discretionary spending which will affect poverty programs and social services across the board. State and local governments have already begun to make deep cuts. An efficient homelessness system supplied with significant emergency resources staved off a new wave of homelessness in 2009 and 2010. But with as high unemployment continues, housing prices rise, and safety net programs are shredded, this trend is likely to shift direction; there will be more homeless people and fewer resources to help them. In the face of growing need and deep budget cuts, an important principle must be to protect the most vulnerable. Certainly, homeless people meet that criterion. The homeless assistance system, in which federal resources leverage significant state, local and private dollars, is the ultimate safety net for the most vulnerable people; there is nothing beneath it. The programs work, they are solution oriented, cost effective and humane. A decision to support these programs and the vulnerable populations they serve would not only be an ethical decision, but a smart one.”