How Crummy, Run-Down Housing Harms the Children Who Live in It

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2013/10/how-crummy-run-down-housing-harms-children-who-live-it/7345/



The housing crisis sounded all kinds of alarms for policymakers and the public about what happens when families can't afford their homes, or when they lose the stability that a secure home provides. We've heard about the effects of foreclosures on neighborhoods, the weight of housing stress on human health, the impact of lost equity on household wealth for huge portions of the U.S. population.

But something has been absent in all this talk about how unstable housing in any form affects families.

"The attention raised by the mortgage crisis and the foreclosure crisis really missed a lot of central aspects of housing that are likely to be important for children," says Rebekah Levine Coley, a professor in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College.

Notably, it's the quality of housing – the presence of peeling paint or cockroaches, broken appliances or damaged walls – that most strongly predicts a child's well-being and development.