Research and News Roundup:
December 2025

Photo by Emil Widlund on Unsplash

The Research and News Roundup is a monthly blog series that features a curated list of recent news and research related to housing instability, homelessness, and affordable housing. Together, these topics provide insights about the full housing continuum and provide community stakeholders with information about emergent research, promising practices, and innovative solutions related to housing and homelessness.

This blog examines recent research and emerging practices highlighting strategies to prevent system involvement, reduce homelessness after incarceration, and preserve affordable housing.

HOUSING INSTABILITY

How Does Housing Influence Family Involvement with Child Welfare Systems?

How Does Housing Influence Family Involvement with Child Welfare Systems?, uses a national administrative data set to examine the relationship between housing instability and family involvement with child protective services and the child welfare system. The analysis finds that housing instability, including difficulty paying rent, overcrowding, frequent moves, eviction, and homelessness, significantly increases the likelihood of child welfare system involvement. Families experiencing housing challenges are more likely to be reported to child protective services, experience child removal, and face delays in reunification.

The analysis also identifies housing as a critical prevention policy lever across primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of child maltreatment prevention. At the primary level, access to safe, affordable housing reduces family stress and lowers community level risk factors for maltreatment. At the secondary level, targeted housing assistance and supportive housing for families with known risk factors can prevent unnecessary removals and escalation into the child welfare system. At the tertiary level, stable housing supports faster reunification, reduces time in foster care, and lowers the risk of repeat child welfare involvement. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that housing investments play a central role in preventing maltreatment and strengthening family stability.

HOMELESSNESS

Homelessness After Jail Exit among Previously Housed Individuals

Homelessness Following Jail Exit among Previously Housed Individuals was published in the Journal of Urban Health in October 2025. This research study examined the relationship between short term jail incarceration and subsequent housing loss. Using linked health, housing, and criminal justice data from San Francisco County, the authors studied adults who entered jail while housed and tracked their housing outcomes after release. The study found that more than one quarter of previously housed individuals experienced housing loss within six months of leaving jail. Notably, the median jail stay was only four days, and housing loss occurred even after very short periods of incarceration. Individuals who became unhoused were more likely to have pre incarceration mental health and substance use diagnoses and higher use of related emergency services. Housing loss after jail was also strongly associated with future system involvement, with unhoused individuals being twice as likely to be reincarcerated within one year. The analysis also showed that the more jail bookings a person had, the more likely it was that they would experience homelessness. These findings suggest that even brief jail stays can trigger a cycle of housing instability and repeated incarceration. Structural factors, including barriers to housing for justice involved individuals and increased criminalization of homelessness, further reinforce this cycle. The study highlights that housing loss following jail exit is not limited to people who were previously homeless but also affects individuals who were stably housed prior to incarceration. Taken together, the findings indicate that housing stabilization and loss prevention are integral components of jail reentry and diversion strategies to reduce homelessness and recidivism.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Estimating the Cost to Preserve the Nation’s Public Housing Stock

This technical report, Estimating the Cost to Preserve the Nation’s Public Housing Stock, was published in October 2025 by the Public and Affordable Housing Research Corporation (PAHRC) in partnership with the 10 Year Roadmap for Public Housing Sustainability. The report introduces a new national approach to estimating public housing preservation costs using recent renovation data from properties converted through the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program. The study models costs based on building age, condition, size, and location, using data from almost 900 public housing properties that underwent RAD conversions. It found that preserving the nation’s remaining public housing stock in 2025 would cost an estimated $188,090 per unit, totaling $169.1 billion nationwide. Costs are significantly higher for older buildings, particularly those over 60 years old, which often require full system replacement or reconstruction. Properties in the South have higher hard construction costs than some other regions, placing states like North Carolina at a financial disadvantage when trying to preserve aging public housing. Urban areas with higher construction cost indexes, like Charlotte, typically have higher per unit costs because labor and material costs tend to be higher in urban markets. Large metropolitan housing authorities, like INLIVIAN, are more likely to manage older, multifamily buildings, which are consistently linked to higher preservation costs. Taken together, the findings show that public housing preservation is becoming more expensive over time, particularly in fast growing urban regions, with costs driven by aging buildings, rising construction prices, and long-standing underinvestment.