Housing Instability and Drug Records

Background

People with drug records (PDR) are subject to collateral sanctions which are social and economic consequences that restrict access to many essential aspects of modern life, such as housing and employment. Access to housing is frequently cited as a major concern for people exiting prison and the literature suggests it serves a protective role against criminal behavior. Since the late 1980’s, PDR have faced increasing restrictions on accessing public housing coupled with stigma and prejudice when attempting to access market-based housing. Yet, our knowledge concerning whether or how these factors impact access to housing for PDR is limited. This study aims to add to this dearth of knowledge by answering these questions:

1. Is having a drug record associated with a higher likelihood of experience housing instability?
2. Does this relationship hold when tested among only those with criminal histories?

Methods

This cross-sectional study uses data from the 2^nd wave of the Fragile Families (FF) study to test the hypothesis that due to policy and stigma having a drug record will be related to a higher likelihood of experiencing housing instability. FF is a nationally representative study of predominantly unwed (75%) parents of children born from 1998-2000 in U.S. cities with populations over 200,000. In this wave, only fathers were asked about their criminal records and thus the data is only applicable to fathers of children in urban areas in the US.

OLS Regressions were run using all fathers interviewed in wave 2 of the FF study (n = 3378) then followed by a series of OLS regressions incorporating only those fathers with criminal records (n = 747). A variety of control variables were incorporated in these models as well to assess the impact of having a drug record on experiencing housing instability.

Housing instability was measured in 3 ways:

1. # of moves in the past year
2. Current housing situation (0 own, 1 rent, 2 living w/ others, 3 temporary housing, 4 halfway house, 5 jail, 6 shelter, 7 homeless)
3. # of housing crises in the past year (0 – 4; Not paying full rent or mortgage; Evicted from your home; Moved in with other people because of financial problems; Stayed in a shelter/car/abandoned building)

Results                                                                                                                                                  

Results provide some support for the notion that having a drug record is associated with an increased likelihood of experiencing housing instability. In the models using all fathers, scores for PDR were 0.14 points higher (p>0.05) for # of housing crises. The models incorporating only fathers with criminal records showed that PDR scored 0.80 points higher (p<.001) indicating a more perilous housing situation.

Discussion

This study provides some evidence that a drug record can increase the likelihood of housing instability. However, it still lends credence to the notion that any type of record is detrimental to housing stability. This highlights the importance of understanding housing instability among PDR and other offenders and indicates future research is needed that assesses the impact of housing instability on recidivism and other social or economic outcomes.