Housing and Reunifying from Foster Care: Meeting Mandated Requirements for “Adequate Housing” in Competitive Urban Centers

Background/Purpose:  Securing and maintaining adequate housing are determining factors in the stability of families reunified from foster-care. Housing is foundational for all families, but for parents working to get their children home it can be a barrier to timely reunification. Housing is a strong consideration for judges and the courts who want children returned to a stable environment and as such often order that parents secure adequate housing prior to reunification. Parents who lack housing while separated from their children can frequently find their reunification delayed by the courts even after meeting all other requirements set forth for them. In highly competitive housing markets, like many urban centers, parents struggle tremendously to both secure and maintain housing for themselves and their children. This secondary data analytic project explores the journeys that mothers navigated in meeting the directives of the courts to secure adequate housing in order to reunify and the role that housing plays in their families’ lives.  

Methods: Data and Sample. Content analysis of twenty in-depth interviews from formerly child welfare affected mothers now reunified with their child/children was conducted to explore their lived experiences of the relevant factors related to their acquisition of and maintenance of secure housing for their families.  

Results: Sixteen of the twenty mothers were securely housed, that is that they were the primary leaseholders on their apartments. The remaining four mothers were in different stages of insecure housing and navigating short or longer terms stays with family and friends, with one mother navigating the shelter system while trying to secure an apartment using a time-sensitive housing voucher. Mothers were able to sustain stable housing through housing supports like voucher programs or living within public housing complexes or through part-time or full-time work. Mothers stories detailed the ways in which having secure housing allowed them to become more effective protective factors for their children through establishing safety, re-establishing family norms and routines and stability within the home.

Conclusions & Implications: Housing instability is intricately intertwined with the child welfare system, particularly in overheated urban real estate markets. The availability of a voucher that will translate into an apartment deemed “adequate” can make the difference between a protracted separation between parents and their children or a faster return to the work of re-establishing the family bonds necessary for stable placements. With current cuts being scheduled for public housing and other voucher programs, implications for the stability of families and vulnerability to child welfare involvement must be considered.