THA’s Work in Education
Housing as a Platform for Improving Educational Outcomes
Our mission is to help our residents prosper, so that their time with us is a chance for transformation and growth. School success is part of this aim.
In 2024, THA counted nearly 4,000 school-aged children in our subsidized housing, making up about 40 percent of our household members and 13 percent of the Tacoma Public Schools population.
Additionally, nearly 60 percent of THA’s tenants and voucher holders have enrolled in some college, yet only 15 percent have completed a post-secondary credential.
Housing and education are inextricably linked.
For students to be successful, they must be stably housed. THA is positioned in a way that we can assist families in accessing educational resources and supports.
As we seek to help the people we house succeed in school and support the success of schools serving low-income students, we have doubled down on the following goals:
- THA’s partnership with Tacoma Public Schools gives our school-aged residents resources to support them through high school graduation.
- THA residents have the support to enroll in post-secondary degree or certificate programs and the help they need to pursue their own educational goals.
- THA invests in Tacoma’s homeless system to serve more Tacomans, students and their families, who are experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity.
Partnering to Expand Our Reach
Current Approach
We recognize housing may be the barrier preventing someone from enrolling in school, and that graduating does not guarantee immediate housing stability. With this in mind, we have shifted our focus away from programs where eligibility requires being enrolled as a student in favor of supporting households where they are and ensuring that housing instability does not disrupt or jeopardize their education.
THA partners with a variety of community organizations to support households with current or future students. This includes:
- Supporting families with school-aged youth through our 2Gen program, which centers social and emotional well-being through family-defined goals, coaching, community resources, and incentives for reaching goals.
- Working with homeless service providers to increase access to housing, including Tacoma Public Schools’ McKinney-Vento Liaisons who work with TPS families experiencing homelessness and housing instability.
- THA’s Children’s Savings Account Program, a partnership with the Washington Student Achievement Council and Washington’s Guaranteed Education Tuition (GET) program, a 529 prepaid tuition plan that helps families save up for higher education.
Past Approaches
THA’s education project began by prioritizing vouchers for families with children enrolled at McCarver Elementary School (now Edna Travis Elementary), with the aim of bringing down the school’s turnover rate and keeping students in class.
The program succeeded in improving student stability, but participants found that finding housing within the school’s Hilltop neighborhood was challenging. And as we looked to expand the program, we found that the 25:1 ratio of participants for case management provided by THA was unsustainable for scaling.
In 2014, building off of the work with Tacoma Public Schools, THA’s College Housing Assistance Program (CHAP) used our Moving to Work flexibilities to provide vouchers to college students attending Tacoma Community College (TCC) who were experiencing homelessness or housing instability. Additionally, we bought down the rents of local apartment complexes near TCC and University of Washington Tacoma. CHAP was later sunset in 2021.
These experiences helped THA recognize that we can improve access to housing resources for students and their families by investing in existing systems rather than creating brand-new programs.
Lessons Learned
Over the years, we found that the challenges facing students and families with children are similar to the broader population of Tacomans facing housing instability, including access to transportation, trauma, health crises, and the need to balance work, school, and childcare.
Conditioning housing assistance on enrollment did not address the additional barriers these households were facing. Nor did it lead to equitable outcomes for all participants. For instance, more than half of CHAP voucher holders (52 percent) had their housing assistance terminated for not meeting the continued eligibility requirements, while 17 percent graduated.
Students with little to no income faced additional barriers meeting the minimum rent payment and income requirements set by landlords. Only half of those approved for a voucher completed the steps to receive one, and of those approved, only half secured housing. Male and Black/African American students were least likely to secure housing.
Data-Driven Refinements
Based on these findings, THA opted to move CHAP participants into income-based rents, with a deeper subsidy and no time limits on assistance. The enrollment requirements were removed, allowing students to pursue programs at other colleges, and we expanded eligibility for property-based subsidies to include potential students from all low-income households.
We have also invested in the Pierce County homeless system to make it large enough to accept students, leveraging service funding from the county, and we are working with existing THA customers to remove barriers to enrollment in post-secondary degree and certificate programs.