When kids are evicted, they often lose both home and school

HOUSTON — Since her birth 10 years ago, Mackenzie Holmes has rarely called one place home for long.

There was the house in Houston owned by her grandmother, Crystal Holmes. Then, after Holmes lost her Southwest Airlines job and the house, there was the trio of apartments in the suburbs — and three evictions. Then another rental, and another eviction. Then motels and her uncle's one-bedroom apartment, where Mackenzie and her grandmother slept on an inflatable mattress. Finally, Crystal Holmes secured a spot in a women's shelter, so the two would no longer have to sleep on the floor.

With nearly every move came a new school, a new set of classmates, and new lessons to catch up on. Mackenzie only has one friend she's known longer than a year, and she didn't receive testing or a diagnosis for dyslexia until this year. She would often miss long stretches of class in between schools.

Schoolchildren threatened with eviction are more likely to end up in another district or transfer to another school, often one with less funding, more poverty and lower test scores. They're more likely to miss school, and those who end up transferring are suspended more often. That's according to an analysis from the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, published in Sociology of Education, a peer-reviewed journal, and shared exclusively with The Associated Press' Education Reporting Network.

Pairing court filings and student records from the Houston Independent School District, where Mackenzie started kindergarten, researchers identified more than 18,000 times between 2002 and 2016 when students lived in homes threatened with eviction filings. They found students facing eviction were absent more often. Even when they didn't have to change schools, students threatened with eviction missed four more days in the following school year than their peers.

In all, researchers counted 13,197 children between 2002 and 2016 whose parents faced an eviction filing. A quarter of those children faced repeated evictions.

As eviction rates in Houston continue to worsen, there might be more children like Mackenzie.

Falling behind on rent — and finding a way to finish the school year

Neveah Barahona, a 17-year-old big sister to seven siblings, started kindergarten in Houston, but has moved schools half a dozen times. Her mother, Roxanne Abarca, knew moving can be disruptive. So whenever she fell behind on rent and the family was forced to move, she tried to let them finish the school year – even if it meant driving them great distances.

Neveah, a strong student who hopes to join the military, said the moves took a toll.

''It is kind of draining, meeting new people, meeting new teachers, getting on track with ... what they want to teach you and what you used to know,'' Neveah said. Then there's finding her way with new classmates. A spate of bullying this year left her despondent until she got counseling.

Households with children are about twice as likely to face eviction than those without children, Eviction Lab research has shown. That's 1.5 million children getting evicted every year — and one in 20 children under 5 living in a rental home. Still, much of the discourse focuses on adults — the landlords and grown-up tenants — rather than the kids caught in the middle, said Peter Hepburn, the study's lead author.

''It's … worth reminding people that 40% of the people at risk of losing their homes through the eviction process are kids,'' said Hepburn, a sociology professor at Rutgers University-Newark and associate director at the Eviction Lab.

Households often become more vulnerable to eviction because they fall behind when they have children. Only 5% of low-wage earners, who are especially vulnerable to housing instability, have access to paid parental leave.

Under a federal law that protects homeless students, districts are supposed to try to keep children in the same school if they lose their housing midyear, providing daily transportation. But children who are evicted don't always qualify for those services. Even those who do often fall through the cracks, because schools don't know why children are leaving or where they're headed.

Evicted families navigate invisible school boundaries

In the sprawl of Houston, it can be especially challenging for transient students to stay on track. The metropolis bleeds seamlessly from the city limits to unincorporated parts of Harris County, which is divided into 24 other districts. It's easy to leave Houston's school district without realizing it. And despite the best efforts of parents and caretakers, kids can miss a lot of school in transition.

That's what happened in January, when Mackenzie's grandmother, then staying in her son's one-bedroom apartment with her granddaughter, got desperate. Fearful her son would get evicted for having family stay with him, Crystal Holmes — who had no home, no car and no cell phone service — walked miles to a women's shelter.

The shelter, where she and Mackenzie now share a room, is in another district's enrollment zone. She worried about Mackenzie being forced to move schools again — the fifth grader had already missed the first three weeks of the school year, when her grandmother struggled to get her enrolled.

Thankfully, the federal law kicked in, and Mackenzie's school, Thornwood Elementary, now sends a car to fetch her and other students from the shelter.

Houston Independent School District did not respond to interview requests.

Millicent Brown lives in a public housing project in Houston, alongside an elevated highway so noisy she had to buy a louder doorbell. She and her daughter, Nova, 5, were forced to move last year when Nova's father threatened to hurt Brown.

Nova had attended a charter school. But when she moved, the school said it could only bus Nova from her new home if she waited on a street that Brown said was too dangerous. Instead, Nova missed a month of school before enrolling in a nearby public school.

Brown grew up bouncing between schools and wants better for Nova. But she may have to move again: The state has plans to widen the highway. It would wipe out her housing project — and Nova's new school.

Nearly three years ago, Neveah and her family settled into a ranch-style home down a country road in Aldine. It's brightly lit, with four bedrooms and a renovated kitchen. Neaveah adopted a neighborhood cat she named Bella. Her sister Aaliyah painted a portrait of the home that's displayed in the living room.

''When we were little, we always kept moving,'' Aaliyah said. ''I don't want to move. I already got comfortable here.''

Then, last year, her mother once again began to fall behind on rent. Ultimately, Abarca received an eviction notice.

The mother was lucky. At the courthouse, she met an employee tasked with helping families stay in their homes. The employee connected her with a nonprofit that agreed to pay six months of her rent while Abarca got back on her feet.

And she did, working from home as a call operator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

But the siblings' dream of a ''forever home" may still come to an end. Abarca learned this month the home's owner hopes to sell to an investor, displacing them once again.

____

The Associated Press' education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.