The Cost of Childhood Housing Insecurity
Dustin Hare | December 16, 2025
Housing in Kansas, like much of the country, has become less and less affordable. The gap between housing prices and household income has quickly become more pronounced since 2019. Locked out of homeownership and unable to keep up with rising rents, families are left in precarious housing situations and are being pushed into homelessness at record rates.
Approximately 1.2 million children experience homelessness each year, including nearly half a million infants and toddlers. Childhood housing insecurity and homelessness often has profound detrimental effects on children, sending ripples through communities.
Effects on Kids
For infants and toddlers, the negative effects of housing insecurity are most acute. Experiencing chronic stress during this crucial period of brain development rewires how the brain responds to stressful situations. This impedes brain development and causes issues that can remain present throughout their life.
Infants and toddlers experiencing housing insecurity may later experience cognitive issues (like impairment to memory and learning) and emotional issues (like anxiety and aggression). Physical health problems are also more common when infants and toddlers experience homelessness. Low birth weights, And What We Can Do To Address It increased hospitalizations, respiratory issues, asthma, fevers, allergies, and malnutrition were all found to be more common in young children who experienced homelessness compared to their peers with similar socioeconomic backgrounds who did not experience homelessness.
Children who are housing insecure continue to experience physical and mental health issues when they enter the school system, causing measurable decreases in educational outcomes. Whether they are spending the night on the street, in a shelter, or in a relative’s living room, kids experiencing homelessness struggle to get adequate sleep and have trouble paying attention in class. Conversely, kids may feel like school is a safe space, and they may begin to display behaviors near the end of the day as the anxiety of returning to a less desirable situation begins to settle in. This can cause children to become withdrawn and less social on one hand, or aggressive and disruptive on the other.
Housing insecure children also frequently struggle with depression and substance use, with 71% of homeless children reporting drug or alcohol abuse disorders.
As kids get older and experience more social pressures, homelessness can become very isolating. It can be embarrassing for adolescent children, who have no or sporadic access to a shower or a washing machine, to show up to school unwashed. This can reduce self-esteem, increase the risk of bullying, and lead to absenteeism, as the child may avoid going to school altogether. In fact, it is common for children without stable housing to miss a lot of school. For instance, a 2014 study found a strong correlation between childhood homelessness and truancy, with some kids missing up to 30% of school days each year.
The uncertainty and stress caused by housing insecurity leads to diminished educational outcomes. Research has shown that children who experience housing insecurity score lower on assessments and are less likely to graduate, leaving them more likely to struggle with financial insecurity as they enter into adulthood.
Sensible Solutions
Keep Renters in Affordable Housing
Most instances of homelessness can be prevented. If we want to avoid the lifelong trauma and learning loss associated with childhood housing insecurity, supports must be available for families who are struggling to keep up with rising housing costs.
Robust rental assistance should be a priority for lawmakers at all levels – municipal, state, and federal. Because renters are more than twice as likely to be cost-burdened than homeowners, it also makes sense to focus attention on ensuring renters stay housed. Providing adequate rental assistance dollars to keep families housed when crisis hits is an investment that will pay dividends.
Data analyzed from Seattle, Washington, showed it costs $4,066 per month to provide services after someone has become homeless, for things like emergency services, hospitalization, and time spent in jail. It is much more cost effective to stop homelessness from occurring in the first place by providing a one-time rental assistance payment to prevent eviction.
This will save money in the short-term by avoiding the cost of homeless services, and in the long run by avoiding the lifelong impacts caused by childhood homelessness.
Protect Renters’ Rights to Safe Living Conditions
Not all evictions are caused by the inability to keep up with the rent. Too often, families are forced to sacrifice their health, safety, and well-being out of fear of losing their home. Desperate to find housing that fits their budget, low-income families may accept substandard conditions, living in homes with mold, pests, non-working appliances, and structural issues, all of which cause health conditions and chronic stress in young children.
As requests to address the problems go ignored by the landlord, tenants are left with no recourse. In some cases, renters who continue to push the landlord to remedy an issue may be met with threats of eviction in order to silence them. Sometimes, problems may go unaddressed and continue to worsen for years, as evidenced by the several large apartment complexes we’ve seen condemned throughout Kansas the past few years, each time leaving families out on the street with nowhere to go.
Families living in unsafe housing should have agency to improve their situation, and simple policy fixes can help. First, there should be protections in place against retaliation. A renter should not be subject to eviction or threat of eviction for demanding their right to dignity and safety. Second, renters should have tools at their disposal to improve their living conditions. When landlords refuse to address safety issues, the renter should have the right to break their lease, refuse to pay rent, or to find a contractor to fix the problems and send an invoice to the landlord.
Address Chronic Homelessness
Decades of research and experimentation have shown that the provision of permanent supportive housing, an idea commonly referred to as “Housing First,” is the key to keeping folks housed.
Under the Housing First model, the government subsidizes housing for those suffering from chronic homelessness, with no requirement that they seek treatment for mental illness or substance use. Once they are stably housed, wraparound support services are offered but not required. A review of 26 studies showed that Housing First initiatives reduced homelessness by 88%.
Skeptics of the Housing First model argue that it’s expensive and that providing people with housing disincentivizes them from getting a job. However, decades of data clearly show that Housing First programs actually save taxpayers money – and a lot of it. Permanent housing offers stability that is difficult to obtain during periods of homelessness. This stability increases the likelihood of becoming employed. Analysis of one program showed a 42.5% increase in income and benefits after people became permanently housed.
Stability also means fewer encounters with crisis-oriented systems like hospitals and jails. One program evaluated the emergency services costs for each of their participants during the year before they were housed and found that, even after accounting for the increase in housing costs, the total cost to the public was decreased by 60%.
Conclusion
Kansas is not powerless in the face of rising housing costs and homelessness. We can address the problems that lie before us in this moment.
Right now, Kansas can’t afford to not invest in programs that help families stay in safe, affordable housing. When we fail to invest in children, families, and communities, we subject children to countless traumas that could have been avoided and create lifelong deficits that will spill over into future generations. The long-term price tag for this neglect will be immense, dwarfing what it costs to make the necessary investments today.
We know what needs to be done based on decades of data and research. We have Kansas housing experts who are ready and willing to do the work. Now, the only thing missing is the political will to get it done.
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