{"id":293625,"date":"2026-05-14T23:15:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T23:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/293625\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T23:15:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T23:15:17","slug":"university-of-houston-report-finds-housing-instability-drives-poor-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/293625\/","title":{"rendered":"University of Houston report finds housing instability drives poor mental health"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA report from the University of Houston shows housing instability is a consistent predictor of poor health outcomes among Fort Bend County residents.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uh.edu\/class\/political-science\/faculty-and-staff\/professors\/cortina\/final_housing_instability_report.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">report<\/a>, titled Housing Instability and Mental Health, was authored by Jeronimo Cortina, a professor in the department of political science at UH, in partnership with Fort Bend County Health &amp; Human Services and PolicyMap, according to a May 1 news release.<\/p>\n<p>The details<\/p>\n<p>Following a countywide survey, the study shows that affordability pressures, unstable occupancy and unsafe or substandard conditions raise residents\u2019 risk of stress, depression and anxiety, per the release.<\/p>\n<p>Key findings include:<\/p>\n<p>33% of residents surveyed experienced moderate perceived stress60% experienced mild anxiety17% experienced mild to moderate depressionHowever, the risks are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.policymap.com\/newmaps\/e\/uhfbcunstablehousing\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">not evenly distributed<\/a>, with some ZIP codes seeing higher levels of housing instability and mental health crossover.<\/p>\n<p>Notable quote<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHousing isn\u2019t just shelter\u2014it\u2019s the platform on which the rest of life is built,\u201d Cortina said. \u201cWhen that platform is shaky, everything else gets harder: holding a job, raising children, managing a chronic illness, staying connected to neighbors. What we\u2019re seeing in Fort Bend County is that instability shows up in residents\u2019 mental health long before it shows up in any single eviction or foreclosure number.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Looking ahead<\/p>\n<p>Report authors said improving mental health in Fort Bend County will require coordination between housing stability and conditions that make stability meaningful. Recommendations include treating housing as a front-line health investment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A report from the University of Houston shows housing instability is a consistent predictor of poor health outcomes&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[441,107200,107202,56,58,57,24642,107201,513],"class_list":["post-293625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-fort-bend-county","tag-fort-bend-county-health-human-services","tag-housing-instability-and-mental-health","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-jeronimo-cortina","tag-policymap","tag-university-of-houston"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}