Children, Impact of Homelessness on

In most American cities, homeless children are situated in a family shelter or transitional housing, although a minority can be found sleeping with other family members in such places as campgrounds or cars. According to a 1989 Government Accounting Office report, on any given night, upwards of 200,000 children are homeless—not counting unaccompanied homeless adolescents. In the course of a year, roughly one million U.S. children will experience an episode of homelessness.

A “first generation” of research on homeless children, mostly conducted during the 1980s, identified problems that children were experiencing while homeless and raised concerns over their unmet needs. A second generation of research, funded by the federal government during the 1990s, attempted to more accurately pinpoint the effects of homelessness, per se, on children.

While shelter life can be deeply troubling, it is but one of many stressors experienced by children living in poverty. In most cases, living in a shelter is only moderately stressful for youngsters compared to an event such as being exposed to violence, which can have a pronounced negative effect on children's mental health. Although homelessness is unlikely to [Page 75]have a long-term effect on children's cognitive or motor development (as found by Cynthia Garcia Coll and colleagues), it can certainly have an impact on their mental health. According to John Buckner and colleagues, living in a shelter appears to cause children psychological distress such as anxiety and depression, especially for those who are of school age. Children age six and older are usually more affected than younger children, due to greater awareness of their living circumstances and because of the possible shame they may feel about it. Homelessness is likely to affect children's academic performance to the extent that it impedes their school attendance, among other factors. This may vary from city to city, depending on the level of intervention in place to ensure that homeless children regularly attend school.

As Linda Weinreb and colleagues have found, the congregate nature of family shelters makes homeless children more likely to contract communicable illnesses such as colds, ear infections, and diarrhea. Chronic illnesses such as asthma are also more prevalent among them. According to Buckner and Bassuk (1997), their rate of severe mental illness is no higher than that of low-income housed children. However, low-income and homeless children as a group show elevated rates compared to children in the general population. Moreover, they are unlikely to be receiving the mental health treatment they need.

There is some evidence that a “dose-response” relationship exists between length of time in shelter and level of distress (Buckner et al., 1999). In other words, in children who remain homeless for some time, symptoms appear to gradually increase, then level off after a few months. It is unclear at this time what specific aspects of shelter experience are stressful for children. Shelters vary widely in their quality and size, factors that likely influence the degree of stress incurred.

The majority of homeless children are with a single parent, typically the mother, although two parent families are somewhat common in certain areas of the country, particularly the Southwest. The parents’ mental health and stressors can also affect their children, especially younger ones. Parenting is made more stressful by shelter rules and the watchful eyes of others. A reciprocal interplay between the mental health status of a mother and that of her children can often be observed among homeless families: A mother's psychological distress can affect her children's well-being and the behavior and distress of her children can, in turn, affect her own coping abilities.

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