Teacher and student

A growing body of evidence magnifies the critical link between housing stability and children’s emotional development and educational success. Students experiencing homelessness or housing instability are more likely to be chronically absent from school. More than one in four children in the U.S. are chronically absent from school, and these children experience lower academic achievement in the near term and less financial success in the future.  

Addressing this disparity requires getting to the root causes of absenteeism, including housing instability. Eviction is a key driver, and data shows that young children make up the largest group facing eviction in this country. A group of communities from across the country are working to reverse that trend so all kids can have healthy and successful futures.

Student Eviction Prevention Community of Practice  

In 2025, eight communities participated in the Student Eviction Prevention Community of Practice (CoP). Co-convened by Enterprise and ImpactTulsa, the nine-month initiative supported seven housing plus cradle-to-career partnerships to learn about Tulsa’s student eviction prevention framework and efforts in other communities to tackle eviction-driven housing instability among school-aged children.  

Participating communities represented:

  • Allentown, Pennsylvania
  • Dallas, Texas
  • Dayton, Ohio
  • Grand Rapids, Michigan
  • Memphis, Tennessee
  • Northfield, Minnesota
  • Rochester, New York

Over nine months, teams comprised of backbone organization staff, cross-sector data managers, and community partners (from schools, courts, and housing or legal services organizations) worked to better understand the impact of evictions on school-aged kids in their communities and design a locally relevant and actionable student eviction prevention strategy.

Student Eviction Alert System

Enterprise initially approached ImpactTulsa ​to lead facilitation and introduce​ Tulsa’s student eviction prevention framework to other place-based partnerships to help accelerate student housing security. As a member of StriveTogether’s Cradle to Career Network, ImpactTulsa has used the power of convening and data to draw attention to the intersection of eviction and student outcomes — such as attendance, chronic absenteeism, and student mobility — since 2020.  

Tulsa’s strategy centers on its student eviction alert. The system leverages both school and publicly accessible eviction court data to understand how eviction affects families with kids in Tulsa’s public schools and create an early-warning and intervention system to reduce the number of displaced families. ImpactTulsa shared its learnings with the Student Eviction Prevention CoP, including promising practices as well as challenges associated with creating a robust data infrastructure, designing interventions, and mobilizing school and adjacent sectors to action. They also learned from the other teams in the CoP, all of whom have different eviction prevention resource and policy contexts.

Peer Learning Drives Housing Stabilization  

The eight CoP sessions focused on a wide range of topics, from accessing eviction and student data and creating an eviction alert, to convening housing and legal aid partners to support families facing eviction and developing effective eviction-prevention policies.  

The exchange created valuable peer and co-learning across the teams, which are all designing and implementing housing stabilization strategies in their communities.  

  • Seeding Success and Innovate Memphis were already connecting eviction and school data through their newly developed platform. The CoP helped them better understand the data requirements for developing a student eviction alert.  
  • The Children’s Poverty Action Lab works with the Dallas Independent School District to implement a Housing Stability for School Success toolkit. The lab is partnering with Uplift, a large charter network in Dallas, to provide analytics on eviction and student outcome data to help target needed programs, services, and resources to school families.  
  • Learn to Earn Dayton’s Access to Counsel partnership with Dayton Municipal Court demonstrates policy and practice that meet the varied needs of tenants, including legal representation, social work, and education. The team used the CoP to develop a plan to scale their data tracking and evaluation to the local school district to better target this program to families with school-aged kids.

Building a Data-Driven Movement

Teams shared their community-specific action plans at the conclusion of the CoP, showcasing data, partnerships built, engagement plans, eviction response systems, and policy strategies. With resources from The Ballmer Group, Enterprise ​has made​ grant funding available to participants ready to implement their student eviction prevention action plan.  

Collectively, Enterprise, ImpactTulsa, and the other seven communities are developing a data-driven, action-oriented movement tackling the eviction crisis impacting so many families with children across the country. This innovative systems-change work, informed by powerful data and fueled by cross-sector partnerships, promises to remove systemic housing barriers and advance cradle-to-career outcomes for children and youth.  

Alexa Rosenberg is a senior director at Enterprise, where she co-leads economic mobility initiatives.  

Delia Kimbrel, PhD, is Head of Research and Data Strategy at ImpactTulsa, a collective impact organization that works with schools, nonprofits, government agencies, philanthropy, and community partners to improve outcomes for children and youth across Tulsa County. Using data to inform action, ImpactTulsa helps align partners around shared goals and strategies so more young people succeed from cradle to career.