In New York City, where democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won an electrifying victory in the Democratic mayoral primary on a platform of freezing rents, new research reveals just how critical such measures could be for the city’s children. A comprehensive new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) tracking over 350,000 children shows that eviction doesn’t just displace families — it derails young lives, trapping kids in a morass of instability with long-ranging consequences.

Now as Mamdani campaigns for the general election against a real estate industry mobilizing behind his opponents, the report’s findings underscore the broader implications of housing policy, like keeping children in school and out of homeless shelters or cramped multifamily living arrangements. The research comes as cities nationwide grapple with housing crises, making New York’s recent good cause eviction protections and Mamdani’s proposed rent freeze potential models for child welfare policy across America.

According to the NBER report, every year, roughly 2.7 million American households face eviction proceedings — and those households include an estimated 2.9 million children. Despite the massive scale of the problem, researchers have struggled to understand precisely how getting kicked out of their homes affects kids’ lives and futures. Eviction records typically only list adult tenants, making it nearly impossible to track effects on children. And even when researchers have been able to identify affected kids, it’s hard to separate the effects of eviction itself from all the other economic disasters that tend to hit struggling families at the same time: job loss, illness, relationship breakdown.