Every day, more than 5,000 students in St. Louis Public Schools wake up in an unstable housing situation. That is more than one in five SLPS students who come to school with a heavy burden that can impair their ability to learn.
Some children are sleeping on relatives’ couches, in emergency shelters or on the streets. Others are just days away from eviction and homelessness.
The effects of housing insecurity on the children of SLPS are immense. Many students arrive too tired to learn after spending nights unable to sleep well in shelter beds. Others are forced to move in with relatives where overcrowding makes concentrating on homework assignments impossible for some kids.
Eviction-related trauma follows the students long after they are kicked out of their homes. The stress on struggling parents who want nothing more than a good life for their children takes its toll on both the adults and the children. In my position as the homeless coordinator and foster care liaison for the public school’s Students in Transition program, I see this issue’s impact on our students’ performance on a daily basis.
Homelessness is one of the many significant challenges facing the teachers and support staff at our city’s public schools every single day. The city’s growing affordable housing crisis isn’t just driving up eviction rates and denying families any realistic way to build savings; it is hurting the academic performance of our children.
If we believe that education is vital and we want our children to succeed, then they need support, consistency and the ability to get the proper rest necessary to be able to learn when they arrive at school. That is why I am supporting an increase in funding for the City of St. Louis’ Affordable Housing Trust Fund (AHTF).
Evictions and a lack of quality affordable housing were both identified as critical detriments to the health and well-being of both African-American and low-income families in the recent released community report, Segregation in St. Louis: Dismantling the Divide. Creating better eviction-prevention services and increasing funding to the city’s existing AHTF were among 11 recommendations in the report.
As the city works on its upcoming budget, I have been excited to meet and work with advocates from over 30 different organizations that are collaborating to push for increased funding to the city’s AHTF. The AHTF is our city’s biggest local source of funding for a range of programs that help SLPS families.
A large percentage of the funding goes to services for our city’s unhoused families, providing a crucial—but underfunded— safety net for our city’s residents. Other projects supported by the AHTF include providing financing for quality new rental construction for low- and moderate-income families. Still other funds from the AHTF provide home repair funding and utility assistance.
In a city with affordable housing stock that is older and often contaminated with lead, these new affordable housing units provide healthy and energy-efficient alternatives to the overpriced and substandard housing so many low- and moderate-income families are forced to accept. Indeed, the report Segregation in St. Louis: Dismantling the Divide detailed personal accounts about local children getting sick and missing school due to deteriorating and ill-maintained affordable housing.
I urge all of the members of the Board of Aldermen to consider how investments in the AHTF don’t just pay dividends in new housing units and community development. These investments enable families to save for their children’s futures, provide housing security and peace of mind to students (and their parents), and allow our schools’ students and staff a better opportunity to spend class time focusing on educational attainment. That means better test scores, and higher test scores will help us retain families in a city facing continued population loss.
I echo the calls of the Community Builders Network, the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing and Opportunity Council, Habitat for Humanity Saint Louis, Peter & Paul Community Services and over two dozen other organizations: Half of the money that was originally slated for the failed soccer stadium plan should be invested in the AHTF
Deidra C. Thomas-Murray is Homeless Services coordinator for St. Louis Public Schools.
This is the third in a series of commentaries devoted to the new report Segregation in St. Louis: Dismantling the Divide (forthesakeofall.org/segregationinstlouis).
