Older Student Parents More Likely to Face Evictions

Adult learners, particularly those raising children, often return to college seeking greater economic security, including a higher-paying job and better living conditions. But a new report from New America finds that for some student parents, enrollment may coincide with greater housing instability.

The report, produced in collaboration with the Eviction Lab, a Princeton University–based research organization that studies evictions nationwide, draws on court records from 73.2 million defendants in eviction cases between 2000 and 2018. Researchers linked those records with American Community Survey data to estimate eviction filing rates by age, college enrollment status and parenting status.

While eviction risk generally declines with age, the report found that student parents aged 35 to 39 with school-age children faced an eviction filing rate of 22 percent—double the 11 percent rate for their nonstudent peers.

Richard Davis, policy analyst at New America and co-author of the report, said the findings suggest college enrollment is not serving as a buffer against housing instability for these adult student parents and is instead associated with a greater threat of eviction.

“There are a number of structural barriers in our financial aid system that don’t serve [student parents] best,” Davis said.

For one, older students may be more likely to have exhausted their lifetime Pell Grant eligibility through previous college enrollment before returning to school. Some may also carry existing student loan debt that limits their ability to borrow more, leaving fewer resources available to cover housing and other living expenses while enrolled.

“When people think about housing, they think about the four-year institution and the on-campus housing students have available,” Davis said. “But when you think about student parents, those needs are much different than the traditional college-age population. These students need more family housing that our higher education system really isn’t set up to meet.”

As a result, Davis said, many student parents turn to the private rental market to find housing that meets their families’ needs. So “having policymakers and institutions be aware of that fact and be able to help students navigate that market is really important,” he said.

Key findings: This report is the second in a two-part series from New America and the Eviction Lab examining eviction filing rates among parenting college students. The first report found that eviction filing rates among younger student parents with children were slightly lower than those of their nonstudent peers in the same age group.

The new analysis finds a different pattern among older student parents. In addition to the elevated eviction filing rates among those raising school-age children, student parents between 35 and 39 with children ages birth to 5 also faced higher eviction filing rates than their nonstudent peers—11 percent compared to 6 percent.

Nick Graetz, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota and co-author of the report, said a variety of factors may contribute to the heightened eviction risk faced by older student parents, including the financial challenges of returning to college while balancing rising housing and childcare costs.

If older parenting students aren’t threatened with eviction, “they end up doing just as well as similar student groups,” Graetz said. “It really speaks to how jarring and devastating an eviction filing can be, both because it reflects some of the deeper financial challenges people are facing and because the filing itself can have lasting consequences. It can end up on a tenant’s record and make it harder to secure housing in the future.”

While broader affordability challenges require systemic solutions, Graetz said, colleges and policymakers can take steps to help students who are already facing housing instability.

“Tenants are not guaranteed representation in housing court, and most eviction proceedings only take a few minutes because they’re churning through dozens of these a day,” Graetz said. “When tenants do have legal aid, it tends to turn out totally differently in terms of holding landlords to local landlord-tenant laws, making sure tenants receive the correct prefiling notice time—all these things that you just need a lawyer there to help navigate you through that process.”

“Rent has been outpacing wages forever, but in something like this, it’s a fairly low-cost intervention to help connect students to legal aid relative to some of the bigger structural issues, like rental assistance and making sure folks have the money they need to pay their rent,” he added.

What this means: The report notes older parenting students may return to college in the hopes of achieving greater economic security, only to find that the added costs of college and raising children further strain household budgets.

Graetz said institutions should pay closer attention to the expenses student parents face, particularly because cost-of-attendance estimates often fail to fully account for childcare and housing.

“When a lot of institutions discuss the cost to enroll in a degree program, they’re not always factoring in housing costs, especially housing costs in the private market,” Graetz said. “Building a better understanding of how housing stability shapes a student’s educational trajectory is really important.”

For Davis, the findings underscore the need for colleges and policymakers to recognize that student parents represent a significant share of today’s college population and often have needs that differ from those of traditional-age students.

“About one in five undergraduates is raising a child while enrolled, and it’s not a small number—it’s over three million students—so the scale of the issue is something that folks should take into consideration,” Davis said. “Our financial aid and higher ed system isn’t set up to serve the needs of older students well, so being able to have folks recognize that is important.”

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