Paternal Incarceration and Housing Quality Implications of Incarceration on Housing Quality in the United States

People who have been incarcerated struggle to find access to quality housing in the United States, which leads to over 600,000 people a year facing an extreme housing crisis with an increased risk of homelessness. People who have been incarcerated face barriers that keep them from securing employment, earning an income, and gaining financial stability, which can have a major impact on housing quality and home ownership. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, this thesis examines ex-offenders’ access to quality housing and the impact incarceration has on home ownership. Results from Ordinary Least Squares regression indicate that households of fathers who have been incarcerated are at higher risk of living in poor quality housing compared to households of fathers who have never been incarcerated. Likewise, results of logistic regression analysis revealed that the odds of owning a home were lower for households in which the father had been incarcerated than for families in which the father had not been incarcerated.