New York’s homeless pupils need more than a school attendance strategy

New York City schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels faces a housing problem as well as an education problem: more than 138,000 public school students experienced homelessness last school year, according to Advocates for Children.¹ A school system cannot make housing insecurity disappear at the classroom door.

The count fell 10%, largely because fewer families were living in shelters, but it still represented roughly one in eight students and remained above 100,000 for the eleventh consecutive year.¹ That improvement deserves recognition. It does not make the remaining hardship an acceptable baseline.

Nor is this simply a count of shelter beds. Of the students identified as homeless, 58% were sharing housing with other families because of economic hardship, while 37% lived in shelters.¹ A roof is not the same thing as a secure home, and policies focused only on visible homelessness will miss much of the pressure families are carrying.

The consequences reach well beyond accommodation. In 2025, only about 27% of students living in shelters in grades three through eight were proficient in reading, compared with less than half the rate among students in permanent housing; 59% graduated on time, against 81% citywide, while 14% dropped out.¹ These are not failures that a motivational campaign can solve.

The city’s own systems can compound the damage. About 37% of families in shelters were placed in a different borough from the one where their children attended school, and 63% of sheltered students were chronically absent.¹ A placement that makes school difficult is not a neutral administrative decision; it shifts the cost of housing failure onto children’s education.

Samuels has cited expanded family support and policy changes made with other agencies, including removing a requirement that children attend every housing meeting.¹ Those steps may help, but they do not resolve the central problem: New York is asking schools to stabilize children whose housing remains unstable.

Family homelessness is not an isolated shelter issue. It is a measure of whether a wealthy city can keep children housed, connected to school and able to build a future.