The Trump Administration is publicly weighing plans to gradually lower the official poverty line by applying a smaller cost-of-living adjustment each year. Doing so would be unjustified for several reasons.

Children experiencing homelessness or living in inadequate and unstable housing are exposed to many risks, including a heightened threat of involvement with the child welfare system. Can child welfare agencies play a role in addressing the lack of affordable housing?

Affordable housing campaigns are not new, of course, but what is unprecedented and transformative about Opportunity Starts at Home is the scope and diversity of the partners that are joining forces to advocate for more robust and equitable federal housing policies.

Quality affordable housing can be a “vaccine” which prevents long-term health problems and promotes healthy, productive lives. When a family’s housing situation is unaffordable and unstable, chances to lead a healthy life dwindle rapidly.

Stricter work requirement policies for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) at the federal level were left out of the recently passed farm bill, but state policymakers are still considering whether to expand or establish their own work requirements for SNAP and Medicaid, with the goa

Housing instability among families and children can be detrimental to child welfare, health, economic, and other outcomes. Policymakers and service providers in these fields should consider weaving housing into their approaches.

Most states use an education funding formula to allocate state and local dollars to school districts. Most funding formulas attempt to account for student poverty, among other factors, in distributing funds.

Are families prioritizing their housing payments by jeopardizing their health and well-being, missing utility payments, skipping meals, or failing to keep up with medical needs or medical bills?

Many low-income families in the United States face challenges associated with unemployment, health, and education disparities.

The evidence on how homelessness affects children suggests policymakers should be doing everything possible to prevent homelessness and, when families who do lose their housing, to help them exit homelessness and stabilize in housing quickly.

Using multiple panels from the US Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation, we find that participation in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or public health insurance reduces the number of hardships low-income families w

This guide is intended to provide information to public health department staff and advocates about the many public agencies that make policy decisions and implement projects  related to the physical environment.