Stable housing at the heart of Minneapolis program geared toward helping students
The Stable Homes, Stable Schools program is now in its fifth year of helping students and families experiencing homelessness and housing instability.
KARE 11
Homelessness and housing instability is something that has been a part of the life of one in five students in Minneapolis. It's something the district, the city, and the county have come together to try and change so that kids can focus more on school and not where they will sleep.
The program is called Stable Homes, Stable Schools. It started in 2019 after the former director of public housing for the city of Minneapolis watched a documentary about the instability homelessness was causing at Lucy Laney Elementary.
Minneapolis Public Schools director of Homeless Highly Mobile Student Support Services, Charlotte Kinzley, said that he went to the mayor and suggested the idea of creating a partnership. The program launched to help the schools with the highest levels of homelessness in the district.
Kinzley said last year, the district had a little over 3,200 students who experienced homelessness, which is about 9% of the student body. When looking at the entire student body, she said 20% have at some point been homeless.
"The effects of homelessness last much longer than even just getting stable," she said. "We know it impacts beyond that experience."
She said she doesn't love looking at statistics, because so often students are resilient.
"Every day we see the resiliency of our students, and rising above all the odds and those statistics," she said. "I just wish they didn't have to."
Stable Homes, Stable Schools Improving student outcomes through housing
Stable Homes, Stable Schools manager Sharmika Riddley said the program has two pathways.
The first, The Housing Stability Fund, focuses on preventing homelessness in the first place. With this pathway, families can get emergency help paying down balances on late rent, late utilities, and eviction court settlements. Riddley said in some cases people can get help with car payments and bills as well. It comes down to getting a family what they need to prevent them from losing their home.
Any time they can prevent a family from becoming homeless, Kinzley said, that is something they want to be doing.
The other pathway helps families pay their rent to escape or avoid homelessness. This program offers a voucher for three years along with case management, which gets families into stable and long-term affordable housing. The family pays 30% of their income toward rent, and Minneapolis Public Housing Assistance pays the rest.
Stable Homes, Stable Schools started off working in 15 schools. Today, the homelessness prevention arm is in all elementary schools, Kinzey said. The rental assistance arm is in the 24 schools with the highest rates of homelessness in the district.
1,627 families with 4,580 children in 24 MPS elementary schools have received help from the program between April 2019 and Dec. 2023, according to the City of Minneapolis's Way Home report.
In 2023, the Stable Homes, Stable Schools grow from a pilot to a permanent program.
The challenge of finding affordable housing
For housing to be considered affordable, a family has to be paying no more than 30% of their annual income towards rent or a mortgage, according to Lutheran Social Services. Finding housing that fits into that cost can be a challenge. The City of Minneapolis website states almost 75% of renters are paying more than 30%, with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color disproportionally impacted.
Kinzey said finding affordable housing for families to live in can be the biggest challenge of the Stable Homes, Stable Schools program.
"It's a barrier that we face," she said.
Investing in the wider housing strategy
The Stable Homes, Stable Schools program is a partnership between the school district, the City of Minneapolis, the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, and Hennepin County. It also sees support from The YMCA of the North and the Pohlad Family Foundation.
Director of Housing Policy & Development for the City of Minneapolis, Elfric Porte, said the city's investment in the program is financial. He said the city has invested $15 million to run the program, and in the mayor's most recent budget, another $2.2 million was allocated.
The city has numerous core values as it describes its housing goals. Those include advancing racial equity, preventing displacement, and investing in households facing the most severe housing instability. The strategy to reach these goals is pretty straightforward: increase housing supply, diversity and affordability in all neighborhoods, as well as produce more affordable rental housing.
The investment from the city into the Stable Home, Stable Schools program is important, Porte said, because it's part of the city's housing strategy as it looks to a future where all Minneapolis residents can afford and access quality housing.
Helping students now and in their future
When thinking about Stable Homes, Stable Schools at its best, Riddley thinks of a family that benefitted from the program last school year. She said the family was a mother and son who were living in a car that did not lock.
"Not only was it not inhabitable, it wasn't safe," she said.
The child was experiencing behavioral issues at school, she said. The mom was able to get support from school social workers to get rental assistance and eventually, a place to live. Riddley said behavior issues didn't disappear but lessened, and the child began to be more open to talking about his emotions with social workers and has been focused on school.
According to the American Psychological Association, the impact of poverty on young children is significant and long-lasting.
"Children experiencing homelessness frequently need to worry about where they will live, their pets, their belongings, and other family members. In addition, homeless children are less likely to have adequate access to medical and dental care, and may be affected by a variety of health challenges due to inadequate nutrition and access to food, education interruptions, trauma, and disruption in family dynamics," the APA says.
According to Kinzey, the program hopes to help achieve higher attendance among the student body, a decrease in behavior issues, an increase in parent engagement, and eventually higher graduation rates.
"We think of removing barriers obviously as making sure kids have school supplies and transportation and all those things but if we really want to get to the heart of removing a barrier, families need housing," she said.
Porte echoed that sentiment, telling KARE 11 he hopes the program can be expanded to the entire school district.
"The hope is that at the end of the day, all children will be in a place where they experience housing stability," he said.