Metro Atlanta is facing a housing crisis that is hitting its most vulnerable population, children, especially hard.
As the city grapples with escalating housing costs and a shortage of affordable homes, nearly 12,000 students across the metro area are living without stable housing. These young people, spread across Cobb, Clayton, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett counties, are at the center of a growing emergency that threatens their education, well-being, and future.
According to data from the Georgia Department of Education, compiled by Neighborhood Nexus, a staggering 11,857 students in Metro Atlanta are currently without stable housing. To put that number into perspective, it exceeds the capacity of Georgia Tech’s basketball stadium and is almost enough to fill Duluth’s Gas South Arena.
However, the real number of affected students may be even higher. Joy Moses, a researcher at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, warns that the data could underreport the crisis. Many parents, fearing repercussions like losing custody of their children, choose not to identify as unhoused when enrolling them in school.
Additionally, while public schools employ homeless liaison staff to identify students in precarious living situations, these staff members are often overburdened and under-resourced, making it difficult to capture the full extent of the issue.
The instability in housing has had a direct and detrimental impact on students’ education. Chronic absenteeism—a situation where a student misses more than 15 days in a school year—has seen a significant increase in Georgia, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2023, 29% of Georgia preschoolers were chronically absent, a sharp rise from 18% five years ago. High school seniors are also missing more days, with absenteeism rising from 22% before the pandemic to 35% in the last year.
Monica Johnson, an organizer with the nonprofit Housing Justice League, emphasized that even students who manage to attend school regularly despite unstable housing face serious challenges. “When you don’t have a regular place to sleep, good food to eat, or access to healthcare, it’s impossible to focus on learning,” Johnson explained.
She added: “If you’re constantly on alert—if you don’t feel safe and warm and content—then trying to learn something or build critical thinking skills or improve your reading or understand math concepts, it’s not going to happen,” Johnson said.
The housing crisis in Metro Atlanta is not just a problem for the nearly 12,000 students who are directly affected; it’s a community-wide issue that demands urgent attention. As the crisis deepens, it’s clear that more resources are needed to support one of the most vulnerable sectors of the country’s population.
