Innocent Victims: Impact of Mortgage Crisis on US Children

Increasingly more children are facing life changing disruptions because of our nation's current mortgage crisis. First Focus, a child advocacy group committed to making children and families a federal government priority, has produced the first comprehensive analysis of how the crisis will impact kids along with policy recommendations on how the damage can be mitigated.

According to the report, an estimated 2 million children will be directly affected as their families lose their homes due to foreclosures. It is estimated that this number will rise even higher when children evicted from rental units that are going into default and other children whose parents default on conventional loans are counted.

Additional report findings include the following:

• Due to the increasing number of foreclosures, school districts across the country are experiencing increases in the number of homeless children entering their classrooms;

• Children impacted by the mortgage crisis are likely to experience excessive mobility and, as a result, are only half as likely to be proficient in reading as their peers. Moreover, they are much more likely to be held back and eventually drop out of school;
• Children forced from their homes experience behavioral problems, such as increases in violence;
• The physical and mental health of displaced children can be severely compromised because families losing their homes are less likely to have money available for items such as health care and health insurance.

To access the report click here.