Where Kids Go: The Foreclosure Crisis and Mobility in Washington, D.C

The ripple effects of the foreclosure crisis have created increased instability for children and families. In this brief we focus on two such sources of instability in the lives of public school students in Washington, D.C.: moving homes and switching schools. We find high rates of residential and school mobility for students in general, and even higher rates associated with students who lived in buildings that entered the foreclosure process. These mobile students tended to stay in the same neighborhood or move to areas that were similarly poor and high-crime.  In this policy brief, we make a series of low-cost recommendations to school districts and nonprofit housing counseling agencies in order to minimize the harm of additional instability on children.