This brief, part of NCHE's new Best Practices in Homeless Education series, examines several successful housing agency and school district collaborations from across the nation and explains how this type of collaboration can help reduce the frequency of family moves and promote school stability.

The Continuum of Care Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), is a competitive community grant program designed to address the issue of homelessness in a comprehensive manner. This webpage provides contact information for Continuum of Care programs in each state.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) is dedicated solely to ending America's affordable housing crisis. NLIHC strives to achieve this goal by working in four program areas: public education, organizing, research, and policy advocacy. One particularly useful area of their website is their Congressional District Profiles page, where they provide housing affordability data for renter households in each congressional district by state.

Out of Reach, an annual publication from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, is a side-by-side comparison of wages and rents in every county, Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), combined nonmetropolitan area and state in the United States. For each jurisdiction, the report calculates the amount of money a household must earn in order to afford a rental unit of a range of sizes (0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 bedrooms) at the area’s Fair Market Rent (FMR), based on the generally accepted affordability standard of paying no more than 30% of income for housing costs. From these calculations the hourly wage a worker must earn to afford the FMR for a two bedroom home is derived. This figure is the Housing Wage.
View Out of Reach publications from previous years.

This report, published by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, uses statistics and trends to describe the current state of housing in the US. It includes income and housing costs, median net wealth of owner and renter households, lowest-income households by cost burdens, median net wealth and homeownership rates by age and race/ethnicity, home prices by region and metropoltian areas, and more.
State of the Nation's Housing 2006
State of the Nation's Housing 2005
State of the Nation's Housing 2004
State of the Nation's Housing 2003

This Spring 2008 brief from First Focus discusses the effects of the U.S. mortgage and foreclosure crisis on school-aged children and their education. Useful statistics related to mobility and school achievement, an overview of the effects of mobility on children's behavior and health, and policy recommendations are included.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is the primary federal government agency dealing with the issues of home ownership and homelessness within the United States. Browse their site to access numerous resources on these issues. Find information about homes and communities, organized by state, by selecting your state under "Local Information".