I work at Boston Medical Center, where the pediatric emergency room sees 28,000 children a year. A survey of 6,000 Boston-area families by the pediatric research center Children’s HealthWatch estimated that more than half of the children younger than 4 were housing insecure, moving frequently or otherwise living in unsafe or inappropriate housing. Such children are more likely than their housing-secure peers to get hospitalized, be hungry, and have developmental delays. As Dr. Megan Sandel, a BMC pediatrician and longtime housing advocate, often says, housing is a vaccine; it protects our children from hunger, disease, and violence, just as a shot protects them from measles.

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