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In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey ravaged the Houston area, causing the homelessness of nearly 24,000 students in the Houston Independent School District (Houston ISD) alone. Additionally, nearly all Houston ISD schools sustained damage of some kind, resulting in school closures, campus relocations, and even the delaying of the start of classes for some students. In the first brief of this two-part series, the authors examine the characteristics of students who became homeless due to Harvey. They found that students who became temporarily homeless for a year or less due to Harvey tended to fare as well as or better on educational outcomes than even their never-homeless peers.

In August 2017, the Houston area was ravaged by one of the costliest natural disasters in history--Hurricane Harvey. In this brief, the first in a two-part series, the authors examine the effects of Harvey on student homelessness in the Houston Independent School District (Houston ISD). The authors find that student homelessness in Houston ISD quadrupled due to Harvey, and most students experiencing homelessness lived, at least temporarily, in unsheltered contexts, such as sleeping in a car or on the street. Unlike other high-profile storms such as Hurricane Katrina, students who became homeless due to Harvey tended to be broadly representative of the district in terms of their demographic characteristics. However, they differed systematically from students who experienced homelessness for conventional, economic reasons such as job loss and medical debt, who were particularly likely to be Black. The authors conclude with implications of these findings for educational stakeholders in preparation for both generational and "everyday" homelessness crises.