From Crisis to Progress: Housing and Latino Youth since 2000

• Author: Jacob S. Rugh
• DOI: 10.1177/00027162211041364
• Published date: 01 July 2021
• Date: 01 July 2021
• Subject Matter: Place

46 ANNALS, AAPSS, 696, July 2021

DOI: 10.1177/00027162211041364

From Crisis to

Progress:

Housing and

Latino Youth

since 2000

By

JACOB S. RUGH

1041364ANN The Annals Of The American AcademyFrom Crisis To Progress

research-article2021

Latino youth housing conditions have transformed dra-

matically over the past 20 years. Rates of household

crowding have plummeted, nearly all Latino children

are U.S.-born citizens, and broadband Internet access

is widespread. However, Latino youth remain disadvan-

taged and their housing conditions remain understud-

ied as they come of age in an era of housing crises, from

foreclosures, evictions, to the novel coronavirus pan-

demic. This article examines Latino youth housing

conditions since 2000, including crowding and mixed-

nativity/status households. Multivariate analyses of

national data show that eviction, foreclosure, and a

representative zip code sample of COVID-19 case rates

are strongly linked to the housing conditions of Latino

youth. The article illustrates these links by analyzing

and mapping eviction rates, foreclosure rates, and zip

code coronavirus cases in the census tracts of Maricopa

County, Arizona. The results underscore the urgent

need for policies that invest in housing Latino youth to

ensure that progress of the last 20 years is lasting.

Keywords: Latinos; housing; youth; crowding; immi-

gration; COVID-19

My experience in a mixed status family in Arizona

was rough. My parents divorced when I was

three years old and my mom was taken into ICE

[immigration] custody when I was 13. Out of

God’s miracle, she was released after two weeks.

She later remarried a U.S. citizen, but it took her

20 years in total to get her permanent residency.

My mother only owned a house once, but the

mortgage was too much, so, after four years, we

went to go live in a rented apartment. My mother

and I have moved nine times, living in Mesa,

South Phoenix, and West Phoenix, where my

mom was mugged. When my mom’s boyfriend

found out, we moved to live with him in Mesa,

Jacob S. Rugh is an associate professor of sociology at

Brigham Young University. His research on housing

discrimination and immigration has been published in

leading journals and cited in several federal civil rights

cases that have secured justice and defended immigrant

rights.

Correspondence: jacob_rugh@byu.edu

FROM CRISIS TO PROGRESS 47

where I lived with my first stepdad for nine years. Now my second stepdad and my mom

live in South Phoenix, where they have been for six years. I love that home. This summer,

my mom tested positive for COVID-19. Although she lost her sense of smell, she did

recover, but I had to help take care of her, quarantine myself, all on top of online classes.

As a first-generation college student, it hasn’t been easy.

—Daycy

Housing conditions matter to the life chances of all youth, and compounding

disadvantage has profoundly shaped life chances of Latino youth age 0 to 25.

Compared to non-Hispanic white youth, Latino youth are five times as likely to

live in crowded housing, fifty times as likely to live in a mixed-nativity family

(Ruggles et al. 2020), and up to twice as likely to be evicted (Desmond and

Shollenberger 2015). These disparities echo the housing crisis a decade ago when

Latino homeowners were three times more likely than white owners to lose their

homes to foreclosure, erasing hard-won gains in wealth and social integration

(Hall, Crowder, and Spring 2015; McConnell 2015; Rugh 2015; Rugh and Hall

2016). The residential stratification of housing conditions that affect Latino youth

the most may hinder the social mobility of the next generation of Latino youth

(Lichter and Johnson, this volume).

Despite the comparative housing disadvantages of Latino youth, tremendous

progress has been made in the housing conditions of Latino families since 2000.

Latino youth household crowding (at least one person per room) has tumbled

from 28 percent in 2000 to 9 percent today, due most directly to improvements

in housing quality, size, and ownership that accompanied Latino dispersal outside

traditional immigrant gateways (Tienda and Fuentes 2014). Today, 90 percent of

Latino youth are U.S.-born citizens (including 95 percent of children age 0–17)

compared to 77 percent of youth in 2000. The rise in citizenship has helped to

fuel the recent rebound in Latino home ownership (Rugh 2020). High-speed

Internet access was so rare it was not measured 20 years ago; today more than 78

percent of Latino youth households count on this essential utility in an age of

virtual learning and video conferencing.1 These and other improved housing

conditions have contributed to a remarkable growth in Latino college attainment,

the clearest demarcation of social mobility and a precursor to home ownership,

neighborhood advantage, and potential wealth. Latino college enrollment has

surged in the past 20 years. The share of Latino young adults age 25 to 29 who

completed a four-year college degree has soared from 10 percent in 2000 to 25

percent in 2020 (U.S. Census Bureau 2021). Like Daycy, many Latino youth are

first-generation graduates.

NOTE: I acknowledge the excellent research assistance of Amanda Galán, Daycy Gomez,

Sarah Robinson, McKenna Swindle, and Faith Williams; and want to especially thank Daycy

for sharing her incredible story. I thank Jim Bachmeier for generously providing the valuable

SIPP-ACS fusion microdata estimates of household unauthorized and mixed legal status. I am

especially grateful for the helpful conversations with the editors of this volume, Lisa Gennetian

and Marta Tienda, as well as the feedback from the anonymous peer reviewers.

48 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

Nevertheless, progress for Latino youth has been imperiled by the ongoing

novel coronavirus pandemic. As of this writing, more than 100,000 Latinos have

died of COVID-19 after three waves of peak death tolls in the United States

centered in New York City in spring 2020; in Sun Belt locations like Houston,

Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona, in the summer; and nationwide during the winter

2020–2021.2 Partly because Latino settlement is dispersed across so many places

hit hard by the pandemic, adjusted for age, Latinos are 2.5 times more likely to

die of COVID-19 than non-Hispanic white people (Bassett, Chen, and Krieger

2020; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] 2021; Egbert and Liao

2021). As Latinos have been devastated by all three waves of the coronavirus

crisis, Latino youth have borne a disproportionate burden. Housing plays an out-

size role in structuring crowded conditions that spread illness, disrupt online

schooling, threaten eviction, and introduce sudden caregiving roles.

For thousands of young Latinos, today’s crisis forces them to cope with the

death of a parent or grandparent. Among Americans who have died of COVID-

19 before the age of 45, nearly half are Latino, and Latinos are seven times as

likely as white people to die before turning 45 years old.3 In California, 73 per-

cent of those who died of COVID-19 between ages 18 and 49 were Latino, while

Latino residents compose 43 percent of this age group.4 In Cook County, Illinois,

home to Chicago, 14 percent of Latinos who died from COVID-19 were younger

than age 50, compared to 7 percent of Black decedents and just 2 percent of

white decedents. Daycy’s mother escaped the worst in part because of her hard-

won gains in affordable housing in Phoenix after a long, winding path to perma-

nent legal status. Their family’s many residential moves also helped Daycy attend

better schools and become the first in her family to attend college, work more

flexible hours, and be able to return to care for her mother in a less crowded

home. As Daycy’s story shows, improved housing conditions of Latino youth—

crowding, housing stability, and legal status composition—are all essential ingre-

dients in the recipe for social mobility.

Although it serves as a key determinant of upward mobility or disadvantage for

Latino youth, past scholarship on the social stratification of Latinos only rarely

conceptualizes the role of housing (e.g., Huante 2021; McConnell 2008; Rugh

2015; Tienda and Fuentes 2014). If our understanding of Latino disparities in

housing and related outcomes is limited, research focused on Latino children or

youth is almost nonexistent. A flourishing literature on 1.5 generation (those who

immigrated before age 13) and second-generation Latino youth has made enor-

mous contributions to understanding how their integration and success in U.S.

society are shaped by class background (e.g., J. Lee and Zhou 2015; Vallejo 2012),

legal status (e.g., Gonzales 2016), racial context (e.g., Flores-González 2017), and

nationality (e.g., Kasinitz et al. 2010). However, in two recent comprehensive

reviews of the literature on second-generation youth and immigrant families, by

Zhou and Gonzales (2019) and Van Hook and Glick (2020), the term “housing”

does not appear. The ways that housing shapes the life chances of Latino youth

remain an overlooked area of research despite abundant evidence that housing

opportunities have been an engine of Latino social mobility for decades (e.g.,

Vallejo 2012).