Housing subsidies, including public housing and Sect. 8 vouchers, are key components of the social safety net, intended to promote family and child welfare. Studies evaluating the impact of housing subsidies on child and adolescent mental health, however, are generally inconclusive. This may reflect variation in the influence by type of subsidies to income, improved physical environment, increased access to resources, and improved perception of neighborhood safety. Further, most prior research focused on housing subsidies failed to simultaneously formally assess child psychopathology. In the present study, we examine, among adolescents (ages 9–17) from a low-income, urban minority area, the association of housing with psychiatric symptoms and disorders, as well as with their social functioning. The data were obtained from the Stress & Justice Study (S&J) baseline survey, an investigation designed to examine impact of parental criminal justice system involvement (CJSI) on their children’s mental health. Housing type during the past year was categorized from parental report as public housing, Sect. 8, both, or neither. Child mental health was assessed with the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC). Additionally, family resources and physical quality of the housing environment by housing type was assessed, and we tested whether these dimensions mediated associations of housing type with the adolescent’s current mental health outcomes. We found that while internalizing and externalizing disorders and impairment were attenuated by individual characteristics (e.g., SES, CJSI), internalizing and externalizing symptom counts were significantly more prevalent among children in subsidized housing, compared to those in non-subsidized housing, after controlling for individual characteristics. These findings have the potential to inform whether, and through which mechanisms, housing subsidies are associated with adolescent mental health.

住房补贴，包括公共住房和部分。8 代金券是社会安全网的关键组成部分，旨在促进家庭和儿童福利。然而，评估住房补贴对儿童和青少年心理健康影响的研究通常没有定论。这可能反映了不同类型的收入补贴、改善的物理环境、增加的资源获取以及改善的邻里安全意识的影响。此外，大多数先前关注住房补贴的研究未能同时正式评估儿童精神病理学。在本研究中，我们研究了来自低收入城市少数民族地区的青少年（9-17 岁），住房与精神症状和障碍以及他们的社会功能之间的关系。数据来自压力& 司法研究 (S&J) 基线调查，一项旨在检查父母刑事司法系统参与 (CJSI) 对其子女心理健康影响的调查。过去一年的住房类型根据父母报告归类为公共住房，Sect。8，两者都有，或者都没有。儿童心理健康通过儿童诊断访谈表 (DISC) 进行评估。此外，还评估了按住房类型划分的住房环境的家庭资源和物理质量，我们测试了这些维度是否介导了住房类型与青少年当前心理健康结果的关联。我们发现，虽然内化和外化障碍和损伤会因个体特征（例如，SES、CJSI）而减弱，在控制了个人特征后，与非补贴住房中的儿童相比，补贴住房中的儿童的内化和外化症状计数明显更普遍。这些发现有可能说明住房补贴是否以及通过哪些机制与青少年心理健康相关。