Across the U.S., Parents Are Losing Custody Not for Abuse, But Because They Can’t Afford a Place to Live
Across the country, child welfare agencies are removing children from their parents solely because the family is homeless or facing eviction—even though federal law explicitly states that poverty is not grounds for removal.
Multiple investigations, including analyses by legal scholars and state oversight offices, show a growing pattern: parents lose custody not for abuse or neglect, but because caseworkers require them to secure stable housing within 30 to 60 days—a deadline nearly impossible to meet amid record-high rents and years-long waitlists for affordable units. When families inevitably fall short, courts initiate termination proceedings, even as many of the same children taken for “lack of housing” end up sleeping in government offices, hotel rooms, or being cycled through short-term foster placements.
The federal government has repeatedly warned states not to confuse poverty with neglect, yet many systems still treat homelessness as a de facto safety threat. Caseworkers cite terms such as “inadequate housing” or “environmental neglect” even when parents are doing everything possible to keep their children safe. Oversight agencies have documented families sleeping in cars, doubling up with relatives, or rotating between shelters, being subjected to investigations that escalate quickly, sometimes into removals, despite no evidence of maltreatment.
A System That Confuses Survival with ‘Endangerment’
Policy researchers say this isn’t happening in isolation. Recent national proposals, including concerns raised by child-welfare experts reviewing the implications of Project 2025, warn that proposed cuts to SNAP, TANF, housing assistance, and other safety-net supports would likely increase family separations driven by poverty rather than abuse. Combined with longstanding structural inequities, the result is a national pipeline in which economic hardship is mislabeled as neglect, and state intervention often deepens family instability instead of alleviating it.
These national trends are visible on the ground in cities where housing instability is most acute. Few people have seen that dynamic more often than Rob Robinson, a longtime housing-justice organizer who works directly with families navigating New York City’s shelter and child-welfare systems. Robinson said the overlap between homelessness and child removal isn’t an abstraction—it’s routine.
“We see it quite a bit,” Robinson told Invisible People. “You’re talking about families already dealing with impossible conditions—couch-surfing, overcrowding, sleeping on the subway because they have nowhere else to go. Then ACS, New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, shows up and says it’s child endangerment.”
From his vantage point, the pathway is strikingly consistent: job loss, a medical crisis, or a sudden rent spike pushes a family into unstable housing. Once they’re moving between shelters, friends’ apartments, or public spaces, they become more visible to mandated reporters—and more vulnerable to judgment.
“Most of the time, the biggest factor is economic,” he said. “People lose income, fall behind, and try to keep their kids safe in whatever space they can find. But the system doesn’t see poverty—it sees neglect.”
Often, Robinson added, what agencies interpret as “endangerment” reflects survival, not maltreatment.
“You see a mother with two kids on the train because she has nowhere else to go,” he said. “She’s trying to keep them warm. But somebody calls the agency, and suddenly they separate the family. It’s not endangerment. They just have no other place to go.”
The Cost of Housing Instability: Impossible Deadlines, Permanent Consequences
Robinson’s observations mirror a growing body of national evidence. In Georgia, oversight agencies, civil rights groups, and investigative reporters, including a recent ProPublica analysis, have documented children removed solely because their parents were unhoused. At the same time, the state spent tens of millions placing those same children in hotels, office buildings, or temporary foster settings. Providing housing support would have cost a fraction of that price.
In several Georgia cases, parents were given 30 to 60 days to “secure stable housing” despite rents far beyond their reach and almost no available units through the state’s depleted affordable-housing programs.
In effect, homelessness becomes the allegation—not abuse, not neglect, but the inability to rent in a market where even full-time workers are priced out.
State Responses Vary — And So Do Children’s Fates
But some caseworkers emphasize that these patterns are not uniform. In California, where legal standards explicitly separate poverty from neglect, child-welfare workers describe a very different framework. A Los Angeles County child-welfare investigator, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly, said state law is clear.
“Homelessness really is not a ground for removal,” the worker said. “A child may only be removed if they are at substantial risk of serious physical harm or neglect—not simply because a family lacks stable housing.”
They noted that many unsheltered parents keep their children fed, enrolled in school, and connected to basic resources through family networks or community facilities. In those situations, the agency provides referrals—not removals.
“We have parents who are on Skid Row, but if they’re getting their child to school, finding places to shower, making sure the child eats—that’s not neglect. Poverty or homelessness alone isn’t a basis for removal.”
When Housing Becomes a Proxy for Safety, Families Pay the Price
The legacy of cases like Gabriel Fernandez, the 2013 Palmdale case in which an eight-year-old boy was murdered after DCFS workers falsified records and failed to conduct required visits, continues to shape the system’s approach. The scandal, linked in part to caseloads reaching 50 or more families per worker, forced sweeping reforms and remains a reminder of the system’s longstanding tension between protecting children and managing overwhelming workloads.
The investigator described California’s current model as one that prioritizes preventing removals, particularly in Black and Latino families historically overrepresented in foster care. They cited new internal safeguards, supervisory reviews, and court oversight designed to ensure removals are used only as a last resort. Still, they acknowledged that housing does shape outcomes once a case is open—not because homelessness triggers removal, but because unstable conditions can complicate reunification.
“Of course, we expect you to have suitable housing by the time a child comes home,” they said. “But even a shelter can qualify if it’s safe and stable. Reunification isn’t denied simply because a parent doesn’t have permanent housing yet.”
A Fragmented System Where Zip Code Determines Outcomes
California’s account reveals a sharp contrast with the patterns documented in other states, underscoring how deeply uneven child-welfare responses to homelessness remain across the country. Rather than contradicting the national pattern, the differences highlight a more complex reality: a fragmented system in which outcomes depend heavily on geography, worker discretion, local resources, and judicial interpretation.
Across that uneven landscape, one truth remains: when housing becomes the proxy for safety, families without it face consequences no child welfare law was ever written to justify.