HPRI Partners

Melissa Chinchilla

Health Services Researcher
VA Greater Los Angeles

[email protected]

Dr. Melissa Chinchilla is a Health Services Researcher with the VA Greater Los Angeles (GLA) HSR&D Center of Innovation (COIN): Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation, and Policy; and an Associate Investigator with the VA Rehabilitation Research and Development (RR&D) Center on Enhancing Community Integration for Homeless Veterans (THRIVe). Prior to joining the VA, Dr. Chinchilla was a Research Scientist with AltaMed Health Service’s Institute for Health Equity, one of the largest Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in the nation, serving over 300,000 low-income patients in Southern California. 

Dr. Chinchilla’s research focuses on the social determinants of health, with an emphasis on housing and homelessness. Among other work, she has conducted research on community integration outcomes of formerly homeless Veterans housed through VA’s largest homeless program, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-VA Supportive Housing (VASH). Her work also focuses on increasing our understanding of Latinx homelessness including barriers to homeless services connection and culturally relevant engagement strategies. Her work has been published in various journals including Cityscape, the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, and the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. She also serves on several local and national committee’s including the National Alliance to End Homelessness’ Research Council and the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Race and Ethnicity Homeless Data Work Group and was appointed by the former Mayor of the City of Los Angeles (Mayor Eric Garcetti) to serve as a Commissioner for the Los Angeles Homelessness Services Authority. 

Dr. Chinchilla earned her doctorate in Urban Studies and Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and holds a Master of Science in Health Policy and Management from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Master of City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a Los Angeles native.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Affordable Housing, Social Determinants of Health

Links to HPRI Research

• Examining the Role of Federally Qualified Health Centers in Homeless Services Connection

• Addressing COVID-19 and Homelessness at a Large Federally Qualified Health Center

• Latinx Homelessness in Los Angeles

• Exploring Community Integration Among Formerly Homeless Veterans in Project‑Based Versus Tenant‑Based Supportive Housing

• Comparing Tenant and Neighborhood Characteristics of the VA’s Project- vs. Tenant-Based Supportive Housing Program in Los Angeles County

Joelle Greene

Director
Harder + Company

[email protected]

Joelle is a highly skilled researcher and evaluator with more than 20 years of experience in the academic and nonprofit sectors. Joelle has expertise in mixed-methods approaches to evaluation and is adept in advanced statistical approaches to data modeling. This includes logistical regression, multivariate analysis, scaling and data reduction techniques. She is also an adept facilitator, and is skilled at guiding diverse groups through a process of learning and planning. Joelle blends these skills with deep knowledge of wide range of issues such as early childhood, housing, mental health services, violence prevention, at-risk youth, and elder services.

Before joining Harder+Company in 2011, Joelle was director of research and evaluation for National Community Renaissance (CORE) and previously served as executive director of evaluation, research and planning for the Urban Education Partnership. Joelle has served as a technical advisory board member of First 5 San Bernardino, and is a former advisory board member and evaluation task force chair for LIFT for Teens. She was also the recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Postdoctoral Fellowship at UCLA. She is an active member of the American Evaluation Association (AEA); she has served as Program Co-Chair of the AEA Business, Leadership and Performance topical interest group, and also presented webinars as part of its professional development series. Joelle can be found most weekends cheering on her daughter from the sidelines of a soccer pitch somewhere in Southern California.

Specializations:

Housing, Employment, Workforce Development, Community Development, Mental Health, Violence Prevention, Youth

Data Modeling, Logistical Regression, Multivariate Analysis, Scaling, Data Reduction

Links to HPRI Research

• Permanent Supportive Housing for Homeless Families Initative: Evaluation Findings

Nichole Fiore

Associate
Abt Associates

[email protected]

Nichole Fiore is an Associate with Abt Associates. Over the past decade, Ms. Fiore has done extensive work in in the area of housing and homelessness leading and working on projects such as Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s Chronic Homelessness Initiative, HUD’s Evaluation on the Impact of Housing and Service Interventions on Homeless Families, the NYC HomeBase Community Prevention Evaluation, and HUD’s Homelessness Prevention Study.

Ms. Fiore has extensive experience working with homeless services providers, community organizations, housing counseling agencies, housing authorities and governmental agencies on various training, recruiting, and data collection, and monitoring efforts. These efforts include documenting and analyzing systems change in communities; implementing multi-site random assignment studies; designing and conducting field based data collection, site visits, focus groups, and in-person and telephone interviews; recruiting sites to participate in research efforts; completing web-based and in-person training; and collecting and analyzing program and interview data.

Prior to joining Abt, Ms. Fiore worked on training and technical assistance issues for a homeless families’ provider and worked on street outreach teams providing resources and information to homeless and at-risk youth. Ms. Fiore holds an MA in Economics from Fordham University.

Specializations:

Housing, Homelessness, Housing Interventions, Systems Change, Economics, Social Mobility, Economic Mobility

Design and execution of site visits and focus groups, multi-site random assignment evaluations, survey design and field implementation

Links to HPRI Research

• Investigating Housing Models For Accelerating PSH Production

• Investigating Housing Models for Accelerating PSH Production: Year 1 Report

• Home For Good Funders Collaborative: Updated Lessons Learned from Five Years of Coordinated Funding

• History and Takeaways from Los Angeles County’s Flexible Housing Subsidy Pool

• Homelessness Prevention Study: Prevention Programs Funded by the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program

Carter Hewgley

Director of Homeless Initiatives
United Way of Greater Los Angeles

[email protected]

Carter is an Adjunct Professor of Applied Analytics at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and is the Director of Homeless Initiatives at the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, where he focuses on building the evidence base, resources, and strategic coalition to end homelessness in LA County. He is the former Senior Advisor at the D.C. Department of Human Services, where he oversaw efforts to increase permanent housing exits, expand daytime service centers, launch shelter diversion programs, implement harm reduction in low barrier shelters, and strategically transition the family system away from a motel-sheltering model. Prior to working specifically working on homelessness, Carter was the Director of Analytics & Performance at the Center for Government Excellence at JHU and spent his career helping state, local and federal governments use data and evidence to solve problems big and small. Carter established the Enterprise Analytics Division at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, served as the Associate Director of Strategy & Performance at DC Public Schools and was an advisor to the Mayor and DC City Administrator on health and human services.

After graduating from Miami University with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and a Bachelor of Arts in Public Administration, Carter received a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Specializations:

Health, Human Services, Homelessness, Emergency Management/Disaster Response, Special Education

Leveraging quantitative analytical methods and data science in an applied context, where those tools and techniques are leveraged for near real-time system improvements for public administrators.

Norweeta Milburn

Director of Policy and Research, Professor-in-Residence
UCLA Health Nathanson Family Resilience Center; UCLA Semel Institute Center for Community Health Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

[email protected]

Dr. Milburn is a Professor-in-Residence in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA Semel Institute Center for Community Health and Director of Research and Evaluation at the Nathanson Family Resilience Center. She received her Ph.D. in Community Psychology from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). Prior to coming to UCLA, she was an Associate Professor of Psychology at Hofstra University in New York and Assistant Director of the Psy.D. program in School/Community Psychology. Her research interests include homelessness, substance abuse, mental health and family-based behavioral interventions.

Dr. Milburn has been a principal investigator for National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) research on homeless adults and youth, and African American youth. She has examined paths into and out of homelessness, as well as the risk for HIV among homeless youth in the U.S. and Australia. She has designed and implemented a behavioral intervention for homeless adolescents at risk for HIV and their families, and she also has designed and tested recruitment strategies for behavioral substance abuse interventions. She has also served as a co-principal investigator on U.S. Department of Education (DOE) and NIMH investigations of coping and adaptation, and anxiety and depression in older African Americans, and as co-investigator on a number of NIMH grants including the training of the next generation of HIV investigators. She has numerous publications and presentations in the areas of homelessness, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS and mental health. She has been both a standing and ad hoc member of peer review committees at NIMH.

Dr. Milburn is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association (APA). She has been a member of the APA Committee on Children, Youth and Families, and recently chaired the APA 2009 Presidential Task Force on Psychology’s Contribution to End Homelessness. Her honors include being an inaugural member of the Leadership Institute for Women in Psychology and the Community, Culture and Prevention Science Award from the Society for Prevention Research.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Youth Homelessness, Race, Class, Substance Abuse, Mental Health, Biobehavioral Science

Links to HPRI Research

• Inequity in the Permanent Supportive Housing System in Los Angeles: Scale, Scope and Reasons for Black Residents’ Returns to Homelessness

• Discrimination and Mental Health Problems Among Homeless Minority Young People

• Social Networking Technology, Social Network Composition, and Reductions in Substance Use Among Homeless Adolescents

• Predictors of Close Family Relationships Over One Year Among Homeless Young People

• Countervailing social network influences on problem behaviors among homeless youth

Saba Mwine

Managing Director 
Homelessness Policy Research Institute

[email protected]

Saba Mwine (She/Her/Hers) is the managing director of the Homelessness Policy Research Institute (HPRI), a collaborative of over one hundred researchers and policymakers that accelerate equitable and culturally informed solutions to homelessness in Los Angeles County by advancing knowledge and fostering transformational partnerships between research, policy and practice. She has twenty years of experience spearheading housing justice work throughout the nation: measuring access to housing based on race and other protected classes and supporting equity centered collaborative initiatives in the movement to end homelessness. Saba has played numerous roles, from project designer and civil rights investigator, test coordinator to management consultant, racial equity educator and practitioner. In her tenure at the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), she established their first racial equity initiatives via fundraising, designing grant programming, developing and delivering transformative learnings, and guiding community initiatives. Saba is a classically trained actor and holds a master’s of fine arts in theatre; she is committed to the arts as a tool for healing racial trauma and shaping community spaces. In California and nationally, Saba is a prominent voice in the movement to establish racism and white supremacy culture as the most pervasive and least examined cause and perpetuator of homelessness.

As managing director of HPRI, Saba is responsible for advancing the Institute’s strategic vision to express equity in all activities and engage community with lived experience of homelessness and serves as the lead staff person for all HPRI activities, including conducting and supervising rapid response research, RFP services, and research translation. Additionally, Saba supports the implementation of HPRI’s research agenda and works in close leadership with HPRI’s Race Equity Committee and other stakeholders to establish equity frameworks for key areas of the HPRI’s work. She is also responsible for planning and producing HPRI research symposia and other events and helps conduct policy outreach at the local, state, and national levels.

Specializations:

Race Equity Training, Homelessness, Supportive Housing, Housing, Community-Based Research, Qualitative Research

Links to HPRI Research

• Race Equity Framework for the Connecticut Homeless and Housing System

Michael Nailat

Program Officer
United Way of Greater Los Angeles

[email protected]

Michael Nailat is a Program Officer with the Home For Good team. He is the founder and lead organizer of the Homelessness Analysis Collaborative (HAC), an alliance of researchers and analysts throughout LA County that develop tools and creative approaches to better understanding homelessness and ways to end it. He also oversees the implementation of the Standards of Excellence, community-wide performance goals and quality standards for service and housing providers. Prior to joining the team, Michael served as the Outcomes Unit Manager at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, where he oversaw grantee performance reporting, continuum-wide goal setting, and HMIS report development. He also worked for many years at Search to Involve Pilipino Americans (SIPA), where he developed programs around youth leadership, political engagement, information technology, and music education.

An avid patron of the creative arts, Michael is the founder of Sessions LA, an afterschool DJ and music production program for urban youth, and he also produces the popular podcast “This Filipino American Life.” He also serves as a Steering Committee member for the LA Chapter of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP-LA). In his spare time, he is a freelance grant writer, IT consultant, DJ, photographer, and community organizer. He has a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from USC, and degrees in Social Science and Asian American Studies from UC Irvine.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Grantmaking

Gary Painter

Director; Professor
USC Homelessness Policy Research Institute; USC Price School of Public Policy

[email protected]

Gary Painter is a Professor in the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. He also serves as the Director of the Homelessness Policy Research Institute. He recently published a co-authored book entitled, “Payment by Results and Social Impact Bonds: Outcome-based Payment Systems in the UK and US.” He has published numerous articles in top journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Urban Economics, Urban Studies, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Real Estate Economics, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, and Regional Science and Urban Economics.

Professor Painter is a leading figure in the field of social innovation. In addition to his recent book, he works extensively with a variety of social innovation organizations and collective impact networks to address some of the grand challenges that society faces. His current research focuses on how to activate the social innovation process. Professor Painter also has extensive expertise in housing, urban economics, and education policy, which shapes his research on how the social innovation process can identify new models of social change within these complex policy areas.

He has served as a consultant for the National Association of Realtors, Pacific Economics Group, Andrew Davidson Co., Fannie Mae, Grant Thorton LLP, Burr Consulting, and the Research Institute for Housing America. Read more.

Specializations:

Urban Economics, Education, Housing, Demographics, Immigrant Integration, Employment, Social Innovation

Econometrics

Links to HPRI Research

• Social Investment in Ending Homelessness

• Social Investment in Ending Homelessness

• Putting Homelessness in Context: The Schools and Neighborhoods of Students Experiencing Homelessness

• Growing up Homeless: Student Homelessness and Educational Outcomes in Los Angeles

• What happens to household formation in a recession?

Andy Perry

Program Specialist
Analytics Center of Excellence Team
LA County CEO/CIO

[email protected]

Andy Perry is a member of the Analytics Center of Excellence (ACE) Team at Los Angeles County’s Office of the Chief Information Officer. Andy conducts research and evaluation projects using the OCIO’s Infohub integrated data system to gain a 360-degree view of the County’s residents and to help improve service delivery and outcomes across departments. Prior to coming to the County, Andy contributed to and ran data programs at nonprofit organizations including CSH, Enroll America, and VPIRG, as well as several successful electoral campaigns. An expert at translating back and forth between “data-speak” and “program-speak,” Andy has used data and analytics to improve program design and implementation in order to find and enroll uninsured consumers in California, guide a statewide summer door canvas to support labeling GMOs in Vermont, and better understand and meet the needs of people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles. Andy holds a bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College, a master’s degree from Brown University, and a preliminary teaching certificate from the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society.

Specializations:

Data integration and data policy, homelessness, anti-racist policy

Research Strengths:

Targeting, operationalizing predictive analytics, data-driven program design and management

Janey Rountree

Executive Director
California Policy Lab at UCLA

[email protected]

Janey Rountree is the founding Executive Director of the California Policy Lab at UCLA. Prior to joining CPL, she was the Deputy Chief of Staff to Mayor Rahm Emanuel and was responsible for developing and implementing the long-term strategic plan for evidence-based public safety policy, police reform, and violence prevention in Chicago. In addition to direct oversight of the Chicago Police Department, Fire Department and Office of Emergency Management, Janey worked on policy issues that touch on violence prevention but fall outside the traditional scope of public safety, including workforce development, homelessness, education, school climate, youth employment, mentoring, and mental health. During her tenure in Chicago, Janey helped to promote evidence-based policy by working closely with researchers to evaluate publicly funded programs and to scale up the ones that were proven effective. Prior to working in the Chicago Mayor’s Office, she was the Firearms Policy Coordinator senior counsel for New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg. She has practiced law, taught high school, and worked in the non-profit sector. She holds a B.A. from Williams College and a J.D./LL.M from Duke Law School.

Specializations:

Public policy, Public safety, Constitutional policing, Violence prevention, Education, Emergency management, Homelessness

Links to HPRI Research

• Serious Mental Illness among People who are Unsheltered in Los Angeles

• Inequity in the Permanent Supportive Housing System in Los Angeles: Scale, Scope and Reasons for Black Residents’ Returns to Homelessness

• Preventing Homelessness: Evidence-Based Methods to Screen Adults and Families at Risk of Homelessness in Los Angeles

• Fact Sheet: What Research Says About Homeless Prevention Policy Programs

• Predicting and Preventing Homelessness in Los Angeles

Molly Rysman

Chief Program Officer
Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority

[email protected]

As the Chief Program Officer of LAHSA, Molly Rysman works to create systems change and public policy that support solutions to homelessness and expand the supply of affordable housing throughout Los Angeles County. Prior to joining LAHSA, Ms. Rysman served as the Los Angeles Director for CSH, a community development finance institution dedicated to expanding housing solutions to reduce homelessness. As the Director for CSH’s Los Angeles office, Ms. Rysman oversaw all of CSH’s training, lending, technical assistance, and systems change work throughout Los Angeles County. Ms. Rysman also served as the External Affairs Director for the Skid Row Housing Trust, one of the largest permanent supportive housing developers in Los Angeles. She collaborated on efforts to serve the most vulnerable individuals experiencing chronic homelessness in Skid Row, including Project 50, the Skid Row Collaborative, and Downtown Pathway Home. Ms. Rysman has also been a stouthearted advocate for underserved communities in Los Angeles, including serving as a Legislative Deputy for Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti, working for the Liberty Hill Foundation, and serving survivors of domestic violence at Haven Hills. Molly earned a Master’s degree in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles, and is a proud alumnus of California State University Los Angeles, where she earned her bachelor’s degree.

Suzanne Wenzel

Interim Dean; Richard and Ann Thor Professor in Urban Social Development
USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work

[email protected]

Suzanne Wenzel has devoted much of her career to interdisciplinary research that seeks to understand and address health-related needs of vulnerable populations, particularly individuals experiencing homelessness in urban communities.

Wenzel has served as the principal investigator on nine grants from the National Institutes of Health. Funding for these projects from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has totaled almost $12 million. Her research involving homeless persons has included an investigation of the relationship of trauma to substance use and HIV/AIDS risk among women; examinations of the social context of risk for substance use and HIV/AIDS among women, men and youth; and adaption of evidence-based programs to address post-traumatic stress and to prevent victimization and risky sexual activity among women. She is also investigating the process and outcomes of transitioning to permanent supportive housing for persons experiencing chronic homelessness and organized a Los Angeles County-wide forum on the topic of integrated care and housing for homeless persons. Wenzel has additionally focused her research on substance abuse treatment quality and continuous quality improvement, and organizational linkages among treatment courts for drug-involved offenders and community-based providers of behavioral health services.

After completing her doctoral studies in community psychology, Wenzel was awarded a National Institute of Mental Health post-doctoral fellowship in the Rutgers/Princeton program in mental health research. Prior to her appointment at the USC School of Work in 2009, she was a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., and was responsible for research quality assurance in the RAND Health program.

Wenzel serves as the director of the School of Social Work research cluster on Homelessness, Housing and Social Environment. She is an elected fellow in the Association for Psychological Science and a fellow in the Western Psychological Association. Wenzel is a member of the American Public Health Association, the American Psychological Association, the Society for Community Research and Action, and the Society for Social Work and Research. She has published 80 peer-reviewed journal articles, has performed peer review services for 35 different scholarly journals, and has served on review panels for the National Institutes of Health and other funding agencies. She is also a member of several community advisory boards.

Links to HPRI Research

• Expanding the Understanding of Risk Behavior Associated With Homelessness Among Veterans

• Gender Differences in the Path from Sexual Victimization to HIV Risk Behavior among Homeless Youth

• The Role of Mental Health and Substance Use in Homeless Adults’ Tobacco Use and Cessation Attempts

• Los Angeles Housing Models and Neighborhoods’ Role in Supportive Housing Residents’ Social Integration

• Moving Beyond Housing: Service Implications for Veterans Entering Permanent Supportive Housing

Ricky Bluthenthal

Professor of Preventative Medicine; Associate Dean for Social Justice
Institute for Health Promotion & Disease Prevention
[email protected]

Ricky N. Bluthenthal is the Associate Dean for Social Justice and a Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and the Institute for Prevention Research at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. He received a BA in History and Sociology from the University of California Santa Cruz and a PhD in sociology from the University of California Berkeley. His research has established the effectiveness of syringe exchange programs, tested novel interventions and strategies to reduce HIV risk and improve HIV testing among injection drug users and men who have sex with men, documented how community conditions contribute to health disparities, and examined health policy implementation. His current studies include a randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of a single session intervention to reduce injection initiation risk behaviors among established people who inject drugs and an observational epidemiological study to examine if increased cannabis availability results to decreased opioid use among people who inject drugs. Dr. Bluthenthal has authored or co-authored over 130 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals such as the American Journal of Public Health, Social Science and Medicine, The Lancet, Addiction, and Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research among others.

Lynden Bond

Research Associate
Urban Institute, Metropolitan and Communities Policy Center
[email protected]

Lynden Bond, LMSW, is a researcher and advocate whose work aims to reduce barriers for people experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity in accessing housing and health and behavioral health services. Lynden’s research interests include social determinants of health, housing insecurity, homelessness, and behavioral health. Recent projects have explored service user perspectives on homeless outreach, and examining the experiences of formerly homeless adults living in hotels during COVID-19. Her current research focuses on how housing insecurity and homelessness impact access to mental health and substance use treatment services among emergency department patients. Lynden’s direct-practice experiences include being a clinical supervisor in a homeless outreach program and in a permanent supportive housing program for individuals with histories of homelessness and behavioral health needs. She is passionate about and committed to using community-empowered methods and partnering with people with lived expertise in her research and advocacy. Lynden holds a PhD in Social Work from New York University.

Specializations:

Homelessness and housing, behavioral health, mental health and substance use services, homeless services research, policy

Research Strengths:

Mixed methods research, qualitative research, community-engaged methods

Links to HPRI Research

• “If you’re gonna help me, help me”: Barriers to housing among unsheltered homeless adults

• Weighing the options: Service user perspectives on homeless outreach services

Maya Buenaventura

Research Manager
California Policy Lab
[email protected]

Maya Buenaventura is a Research Manager with the California Policy Lab. Prior to joining CPL, she was a Los Angeles County Management Fellow with the Department of Consumer and Business Affairs. In that role, she designed and implemented programs to address complex public policy matters such as decriminalization of street vending and developing alternatives to payday, auto title, and other high-cost loans.

Prior to working for Los Angeles County, Maya was a PhD candidate at the Pardee RAND Graduate School and an Assistant Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation. Maya’s work at RAND consisted primarily of evaluations of interventions targeting individuals in the criminal-justice system, individuals experiencing homelessness, low-income families, and other vulnerable populations. Before her time at RAND, Maya worked as a commercial litigator at a large international law firm and volunteered as a pro bono attorney for numerous organizations, representing immigrants, victims of trafficking, and victims of domestic abuse.

Maya holds a PhD in Public Policy from the Pardee RAND Graduate School, a J.D. from the Northwestern University School of Law, and a B.A. in economics from Oglethorpe University.

Melissa Chinchilla

Health Services Researcher
VA Greater Los Angeles

[email protected]

Dr. Melissa Chinchilla is a Health Services Researcher with the VA Greater Los Angeles (GLA) HSR&D Center of Innovation (COIN): Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation, and Policy; and an Associate Investigator with the VA Rehabilitation Research and Development (RR&D) Center on Enhancing Community Integration for Homeless Veterans (THRIVe). Prior to joining the VA, Dr. Chinchilla was a Research Scientist with AltaMed Health Service’s Institute for Health Equity, one of the largest Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in the nation, serving over 300,000 low-income patients in Southern California. 

Dr. Chinchilla’s research focuses on the social determinants of health, with an emphasis on housing and homelessness. Among other work, she has conducted research on community integration outcomes of formerly homeless Veterans housed through VA’s largest homeless program, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-VA Supportive Housing (VASH). Her work also focuses on increasing our understanding of Latinx homelessness including barriers to homeless services connection and culturally relevant engagement strategies. Her work has been published in various journals including Cityscape, the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, and the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. She also serves on several local and national committee’s including the National Alliance to End Homelessness’ Research Council and the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Race and Ethnicity Homeless Data Work Group and was appointed by the former Mayor of the City of Los Angeles (Mayor Eric Garcetti) to serve as a Commissioner for the Los Angeles Homelessness Services Authority. 

Dr. Chinchilla earned her doctorate in Urban Studies and Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and holds a Master of Science in Health Policy and Management from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Master of City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a Los Angeles native.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Affordable Housing, Social Determinants of Health

Links to HPRI Research

• Examining the Role of Federally Qualified Health Centers in Homeless Services Connection

• Addressing COVID-19 and Homelessness at a Large Federally Qualified Health Center

• Latinx Homelessness in Los Angeles

• Exploring Community Integration Among Formerly Homeless Veterans in Project‑Based Versus Tenant‑Based Supportive Housing

• Comparing Tenant and Neighborhood Characteristics of the VA’s Project- vs. Tenant-Based Supportive Housing Program in Los Angeles County

Jessica Monge Coria

Regional Manager, Community Development
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

[email protected]

Jessica Monge Coria joined the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in 2020 as a Regional Manager for Southern California. Jessica is responsible for fostering strategic partnerships with cross-sector stakeholders and community partners to bring the best thinking and resources together to address the barriers to economic opportunities for low- and moderate-income communities.

Prior to joining the SF Fed, Jessica worked to expand affordable housing and supportive services for individuals experiencing homelessness throughout the western states. For eight years, she worked with Los Angeles philanthropic funders and early care and education organizations to develop programs and coalitions to help young children and their families thrive. Jessica also has prior experience in research and program evaluation, working on large scale data development projects including efforts around the 2010 U.S. Census. Jessica is a Southern California native and received a B.A. in Economics from Occidental College and a Master of Public Policy from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy.

Specializations:

Supportive housing, Outcomes-based finance, pay for success, child welfare system

Administrative data, data dashboards for program implementation and monitoring, needs estimates and cost modeling, transactoin structuring for outcomes-based financing models

Robynn Cox

Assistant Professor, Ph.D
USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work

[email protected]

Robynn Cox is an assistant professor and a member of the faculty at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. Her research interests include the fields of crime, health, labor, and social and racial inequality. She has primarily focused on understanding the social and economic consequences of mass incarceration. Cox was a 2014-15 Resource Center for Minority Aging Research Scholar at the USC Schaeffer Center, where her research explored the impact of incarceration on health outcomes over the lifespan. Most recently, she received a Russell Sage Foundation Presidential Authority Award to investigate the relationship between perceptions of criminality, race, trust and employment outcomes (with Jennifer Doleac, Benjamin Hansen and Sarah Jacobson). Cox’s research has also been funded by the University of Kentucky’s Center for Poverty Research through the Research Program on Childhood Hunger and the Young Investigator Development Grant.

Her work has been published in various academic and policy outlets such as the Southern Economic Journal and the Economic Policy Institute. In addition, she has presented her research at numerous professional conferences and has been featured on both locally and nationally syndicated radio programs such as NPR. In 2011, she was invited by Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis to take part in a roundtable conversation with Attorney General Eric Holder and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chairwoman Jacqueline Berrien on workforce development and employment strategies of the formerly incarcerated.

Prior to her appointment at USC, Cox served as an assistant professor at Spelman College and a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Economics at Duke University. She earned her master’s degree and doctorate in economics from Georgia State University, where she was awarded the Andrew Young Fellowship. Cox completed her undergraduate studies at Duke University, where she obtained a dual bachelor’s in economics and Spanish and Latin American studies.

Specializations:

Economics, Social and Racial Inequity, Social Work, Education, Mass Incarceration, Health, Wellness, Labor

Links to HPRI Research

• Road Map to a Unified Measure of Housing Insecurity

• Does the Timing of Incarceration Impact the Timing and Duration of Homelessness? Evidence from “The Transitions to Housing” Study

• Roadmap to a Unified Measure of Housing Insecurity

Rashida Crutchfield

Assistant Professor EdD, MSW
Cal State Long Beach School of Social Work

[email protected]

Dr. Rashida Crutchfield is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at California State University, Long Beach. She earned a Master of Social Work at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis and her Doctorate in Educational Leadership from CSULB. She worked for the National Conference for Community and Justice in Long Beach and the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri before serving on the Covenant House California staff. Experience at this Los Angeles shelter for 18-to-24-year-olds experiencing homelessness gave her insight into practice, building rapport and intervention with this population’s strengths, needs and perspectives.

Dr. Crutchfield has been a faculty member in the CSULB School of Social Work since 2007 as field faculty and lecturer. She began as an assistant professor in 2014 with a focus on practice and research in youth homelessness, access to higher education, social and economic development, and social work community practice. She was the Principal Investigator for Phase I of the CSU Office of the Chancellor’s Study on Basic Needs, and Co-Principal Investigator for phases II and III. These studies are the largest of their kind.

Specializations:

Macro Social Work Practitioner, Homelessness, Youth Homelessness, Food Security, Higher Education Access, Race

Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis with an emphasis on recruiting and engaging people who have experienced trauma

Links to HPRI Research

• The Starving Student Narrative: How Normalizing Deprivation Reinforces Basic Need Insecurity in Higher Education

• A systematic review of food insecurity among US students in higher education

• Homelessness and Housing Insecurity in Higher Education: A Trauma‐Informed Approach to Research, Policy, and Practice

• Study of student basic needs

• Under a temporary roof and in the classroom: Service agencies for youth who are homeless while enrolled in community college

Earl Edwards

Doctoral Candidate 
UCLA Graduate School of Education and Informational Studies

[email protected]

Earl Edwards is a Ph.D. student at the University of California Los Angeles Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. He completed his Master’s Degree in Public School Leadership from Columbia University and received his B.A. in Sociology from Boston College. His current research interests focus on how American public schools can better support youth experiencing homelessness.

Earl has over ten years of professional experience in youth development and curriculum design. As a school administrator and classroom teacher, Earl has designed and facilitated district-wide professional development modules covering data analysis, formative assessments, and effective teaching strategies for students with learning disabilities. Earl also co-authored graduate course curriculums focusing on educational leadership development in urban public schools for Columbia University Teachers College principal certification program. In addition to his expertise in curriculum development, Earl has founded and contributed to several youth development programs that support Black and Latino males across the country.

Specializations:

Student Homelessness

Links to HPRI Research

• Inequity in the Permanent Supportive Housing System in Los Angeles: Scale, Scope and Reasons for Black Residents’ Returns to Homelessness

• Who Are the Homeless? Centering Anti-Black Racism and the Consequences of Colorblind Homeless Policies

• The Unseen and Unsupported Students in Charter Schools

• Hidden Success: Learning From the Counternarratives of High School Graduates Impacted by Student Homelessness

• Young, Black, successful, and homeless: examining the unique academic challenges of Black students who experienced homelessness

Andrea Garcia

Physician 
Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health

[email protected]

Dr. Andrea Garcia is a citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, and she is Mexican. Dr. Garcia is a physician at the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health where her clinical work is at the directly operated American Indian Counseling Center. Her other time is spent on community-centered initiatives and research that addresses the social and structural determinants of American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) health.

Through her appointments as a Commissioner with the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission, and her affiliation with the Center for Health Services and Society in the Department of Psychiatry at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, Dr. Garcia has been able to employ community partnered participatory research methods to better understand homelessness among AIAN in Los Angeles County. Though her strengths are in quantitative methodologies she has come to fully appreciate the value of mixed methods, particularly when engaging with communities who are undercounted or misclassified in quantitative data. Dr. Garcia also has interests in AIAN health equity, workforce diversity in the health professions, and is serving as Guest Assistant Editor for the MedEdPORTAL Call for Submissions: American Indian, Alaska Native and Indigenous Perspectives.

Dr. Garcia is a proud graduate of the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program where she obtained her master’s degree in health and medical sciences from UC Berkeley and her medical degree from UCSF. She trained in General and Preventive Medicine and completed a fellowship with the National Clinician Scholars Program at UCLA in research and policy.

Cheryl Grills

Director
Loyola Marymount University Psychology Applied Research Center

[email protected]

Dr. Grills is a Clinical Psychologist with a current emphasis in Community Psychology. She has been on the faculty with LMU for 29 years and is a tenured full Professor. She is a national Past President of the Association of Black Psychologists and founder of Imoyase Community Support Services (ICSS). She currently serves as a Los Angeles County Commissioner on the Sybil Brand Commission for Institutional Inspections, which focuses on conditions and practices within county jails, probation and correctional facilities, and group homes for children. Dr. Grills also served as Co-Executive Director of the Los Angeles County Blue Ribbon Commission on Child Protection whose work led to significant reforms in LA County’s approach to child welfare, including establishment of an Office of Child Protection that is designed to reduce the fragmented approach to child welfare in LA and coordinate countywide efforts that require collaboration across disparate County departments.

Dr. Grills is regularly called upon as a keynote speaker, trainer, or technical consultant within the mental and behavioral health field. She is currently part of the leadership of a team (consisting of the Community Healing Network and The Association of Black Psychologists) working with CIBHS to establish a CDEP for people of African ancestry. She has over 25 years of experience with multi-site, multi-year and multi-level program evaluations and the provision of technical assistance support via her work as Director of [email protected] and its sister organization Imoyase Community Support Services (ICSS).

Her research interests, publications, and projects include African Psychology, African-centered models of treatment engagement with African-Americans; substance abuse prevention and treatment; community psychology; community mental health, prevention, and action research; and program evaluation with community based organizations engaged in social action, community change and prevention on a host of issues.

Specializations:

Community Psychology, Substance Abuse Prevention, Social Action, African Psychology

Institutional inspections, Program Evaluation

Patrick Burns

Senior Researcher
Economic Roundtable

[email protected]

Patrick joined the Economic Roundtable in 2002, following training in Economic Geography at Clark University, Kent State University and UCLA. He is a public policy researcher specializing in labor market dynamics, poverty, public assistance, housing, displacement, industry change and urban geography, with experience analyzing outcomes for detailed neighborhoods and groups of workers.

Specializations:

Employment, Wages, Housing, Displacement, Public Assistance, Urban Geography, Labor Market Dynamics, Industry Change

Research Strengths:

Compiling, merging and analyzing large public and confidential data sets; GIS-based spatial analysis

Links to HPRI Research

• In Harm’s Way: California Workers at High Risk of Unemployment in the COVID-19 Pandemic

• Locked Out Unemployment and Homelessness in the COVID Economy

• Getting Home: Outcomes from Housing High Cost Homeless Hospital Patients

• Escape Routes: Meta-Analysis of Los Angeles County

• Early Intervention to Prevent Persistent Homelessness: Predictive Models for Identifying Unemployed Workers and Young Adults who become Persistently Homeless

Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro

Executive Director
Ohio State University Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity

[email protected]

Specializations:

American Politics, Political Theory, Public Policy, Race/Ethnic Politics, Gender Politics, Intersectionality

Links to HPRI Research

• The Path to Justice Runs Through Equity: Ending Anti-Black Racism in Los Angeles

Erika Hartman

Executive Director
Safe Place for Youth

[email protected]

Erika Hartman joined Safe Place for Youth in 2021 as the Executive Director, after 15 years in the non-profit sector supporting people experiencing homelessness and underserved youth. Hartman was formerly the Chief Program Officer of the Downtown Women’s Center (DWC), a nationally recognized homeless services organization, located in the heart of Skid Row. During her tenure at DWC, Hartman led the unprecedented growth of programs, dramatically increasing the impact, budget size, number of staff and women served. Hartman also led organizational DEI initiatives, and the prescriptive program model development of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s initiative to implement the recommendations of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s Ad Hoc Committees on Black People Experience Homelessness and Women Experiencing Homelessness. Hartman has also been actively involved in legislative advocacy, at a local and national level, testifying before Congress on the state of homelessness in Los Angeles, and serving as a State Captain for the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Prior to her work at DWC, Hartman served as the Chief Program Officer of Allies for Every Child, a Los Angeles -based child welfare organization, where she led the agency’s national accreditation and was instrumental in shaping the organization’s strategic plan. Hartman also has a background in gang intervention and working with youth in the juvenile justice system, and oversaw programs at Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles, through Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s initiative on gang reduction and youth development.

Hartman has served on the boards of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the Los Angeles Central Providers Collaborative, and the University of Southern California LGBTQ Alumni Association, as well as the Homeless Policy and Research Institute’s Race Equity Committee, and Los Angeles County Commission on Women’s Health Committee. Hartman is also a licensed marriage and family therapist, and received her Master’s degree from the University of Southern California, and undergraduate degrees from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Brian Hui

Director of Research and Evaluation
Special Service for Groups

[email protected]

Brian Hui a community-based scholar-practitioner who believes that research practice should inform public policy and guide community transformation. In the last 12 years, he has worked in a variety of roles in non-profit leadership, providing services for basic needs, public benefits, housing, immigration, healthcare navigation, cultural development, leadership development, and policy advocacy. Additionally, he has led community research teams in community based participatory research projects studying public health risk factors and interventions among Pacific Islander communities in Southern California, including several NIH funded RO1 studies.

Dr. Hui is passionate about the applications of research not only to community well-being but also to broader issues of social justice. Dr. Hui has spent much of his career as a practitioner, and previously served as the Community Development Manager, overseeing the development and construction of a client supportive housing project for SSG. As Director of Research & Evaluation for Special Service for Groups, he practices a community-engaged approach to research to ensure the development of culturally and linguistically competent research tools and protocols, community-informed interpretation of data, and community inclusion in data ownership, dissemination, and human subjects’ protections processes. He also serves as the Administrator for Special Service for Groups, Inc.’s Community Institutional Review Board.

Dr. Hui brings a deep understanding of civic engagement theory and practice. His own research has focused on civic engagement, democratic theory, organizational management, and power. He has studied participatory and inclusive practices in the Los Angeles and written several policy briefs on youth development needs and youth-serving government entities in the City of Los Angeles. Overall, Dr. Hui’s research and vocational interests direct him towards issues and topics relating to the intersection of community organizing, social justice, community health, political power, and institutional reform.

Specializations:

• Program evaluation of homeless and behavioral health service provision
• Health disparities, ethnic and linguistic data disaggregation
• Qualitative and quantitative approaches, needs assessment
• Evaluation technical assistance and capacity building
• Science communication and visualization

Aras Jizan

Portfolio Lead for Data and Technology
Built for Zero
Community Solutions 

[email protected]

Aras is the Head of Data and Technology for the Built for Zero initiative at Community Solutions. In this role, he leads a team that develops and deploys metrics, tools, and trainings that empower communities to leverage data analytics in their work to end homelessness. Prior to joining Community Solutions, Aras worked as a consultant specializing in the measurement and evaluation of food security projects in the developing world. Aras holds degrees from the University of Toronto and UCLA, served on the Biden-Harris Transition Team, and sits on the board of Our Minds Matter, a nonprofit organization working toward the day when no teenager turns to suicide.

Specializations:

Data for improvement, homelessness, data science

Research Strengths:

Applied statistics, data integrations

Va Lecia Adams Kellum

President & CEO
St. Joseph Center

[email protected]

President & CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum joined St. Joseph Center in 2008, bringing extensive experience in nonprofit management to the agency. During her tenure, St. Joseph Center has more than doubled in size, expanded its range of services, and broadened the organization’s geographic reach to include underserved communities in South Los Angeles.

Dr. Adams Kellum is the former Chair of the Westside Coalition and represented Service Planning Area 5 on the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Coordinating Council for many years. In February 2017 she was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to the newly established No Place Like Home Program Advisory Committee, which was established to assist and advise the California Department of Housing and Community Development on the program’s successful implementation.

Dr. Adams Kellum graduated with a B.A. from the University of Southern California and earned an M.A. from Ball State University before completing her Ph.D. at Stanford University. Throughout her doctoral program, she examined the factors that create stress in ethnic minority youth, such as poverty, academic underachievement, and family dynamics. Prior to coming to St. Joseph Center, Dr. Adams Kellum applied her research for six years as the Director of Transitional Living for United Friends of the Children (UFC). While at UFC, she helped create and oversee Pathways, an 18-month transitional living program that assists former foster youth with housing, college readiness, career development, financial assistance, mentoring, and individual counseling.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Youth Homelessness, Race, Equity, Food Insecurity, Employment

Michael Lens

Associate Faculty Director; Associate Professor
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies; UCLA Department of Urban Planning & Policy

[email protected]

A large and growing body of research shows that neighborhoods matter for several life outcomes including economic mobility, education, and safety. For many reasons, positive neighborhood attributes remain unattainable for low-income households in many U.S. metropolitan areas. Professor Lens’ work fulfills gaps in the literature that evaluates the potential for housing policy to reduce this separation by focusing on neighborhood safety and access to jobs. This research contributes to this literature in both conceptual and empirical ways. Specifically, this research 1) measures the neighborhood conditions of families that receive housing subsidies; 2) analyzes the potential interactions of crime with subsidized housing and commercial development; 3) identifies how residential location affects employment outcomes; and 4) improves how scholars and policy makers measure neighborhood opportunity for low-income households.

In recent research, Professor Lens is studying the effect of the housing bust on housing subsidy demand and local government finances, the role of public investments in gentrification processes, and the spatial concentration of eviction. Professor Lens’ research has won awards from the Journal of the American Planning Association and Housing Policy Debate.

Among several grants, Professor Lens has – along with fellow UCLA Urban Planning Professor Paavo Monkkonen – a multiyear grant from the MacArthur Foundation to study the effect of the housing boom and bust on local government finances.

Professor Lens teaches courses on Quantitative Analysis, Community-Based Research, Housing Markets and Policy, Poverty and Inequality, and Research Methods.

Specializations:

Community Development, Criminal Justice, Race, Class, Gender, Equity, Employment, Affordable Housing, Neighborhood Effects, Poverty

Quantitative methods, spatial analysis

Veronica Lewis

Director
Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Care System, a division of Special Service for Groups

[email protected]

Veronica Lewis, Master of Public of Administration is a recognized leader in Los Angeles County in the Homeless Services and Reentry sectors and is the Director of the Homeless Outreach Program/Integrated Care System Division of Special Service for Groups (SSG/HOPICS) where she oversees more than 65 million dollars in annual funding for multi-service programs including: mental health, substance use disorder treatment, reentry support, homeless services, permanent housing programs and sites, and trauma-focused services. HOPICS has permanently housed thousands of households under her leadership.

Under her leadership as Director since January 2011, HOPICS’ annual budget has increased by 1500 percent and the workforce by eight (8) times greater in 11 years. Veronica has worked tirelessly as an advocate to improve and coordinate homeless services in LA County- in particular the Service Planning Area Sixth Region (SPA 6) which is made up of South LA and the Cities of Compton, Lynwood and Paramount. Veronica is the founder of the thriving SPA 6 Homeless Coalition. She has played an integral role in the development of the ever-expanding LA Continuum homeless systems of care as the lead for SPA 6’s Coordinated Entry System for homeless individuals and families. Veronica has represented the interest of SPA 6 and the LA Continuum of Care (CoC) as member and Chair of the CoC Board and Coordinating Council. Veronica is also a Los Angeles County Public Social Services Commissioner appointed by LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn.

She has worked diligently to secure housing resources and build the capacity of small homeless and reentry agencies in South LA and the Cities of Compton and Lynwood. Veronica is currently a part of the National Alliance to End Homeless (NAEH) Capacity Building Network. In her daily work Veronica has and continues to advocate for racial equity and honest dialogue about ways to improve the overwhelming number of health, economic, carceral and housing disparities for black people and other people of color in LA County. She was a member of the Los Angeles Ad Hoc Committee on Black People experiencing Homelessness (BPEH) and delegation of members responsible for finalizing the report and recommendations and currently serves on the Steering Committee for BPEH which is responsible for implementation oversight of the recommendations. Veronica is also a member of the Homelessness Policy Research Institute (HPRI) Racial Equity Workgroup.

In addition to her contribution to local LA County homeless/housing, reentry and SUD systems, programs and policies, Veronica also lends her expertise to help shape policies, best practices and projects at the state and national level through her participation in the Collaborative Justice Courts Advisory Committee for California Courts Judicial Council, National Alliance to End Homelessness- Capacity Building Network, and National Research Council- Transportation Research Board for the Airport Cooperative Research Program Project 03-59 Panel to help develop best practices nationwide to address homelessness at airports.

Specializations:

Street-based engagement, coordinated entry system, homeless emergency services and interim housing, permanent housing interventions, support for people who are justice-involved, the intersection of homelessness, behavioral health, and reentry

Norweeta Milburn

Director of Policy and Research, Professor-in-Residence
UCLA Health Nathanson Family Resilience Center; UCLA Semel Institute Center for Community Health Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

[email protected]

Dr. Milburn is a Professor-in-Residence in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA Semel Institute Center for Community Health and Director of Research and Evaluation at the Nathanson Family Resilience Center. She received her Ph.D. in Community Psychology from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). Prior to coming to UCLA, she was an Associate Professor of Psychology at Hofstra University in New York and Assistant Director of the Psy.D. program in School/Community Psychology. Her research interests include homelessness, substance abuse, mental health and family-based behavioral interventions.

Dr. Milburn has been a principal investigator for National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) research on homeless adults and youth, and African American youth. She has examined paths into and out of homelessness, as well as the risk for HIV among homeless youth in the U.S. and Australia. She has designed and implemented a behavioral intervention for homeless adolescents at risk for HIV and their families, and she also has designed and tested recruitment strategies for behavioral substance abuse interventions. She has also served as a co-principal investigator on U.S. Department of Education (DOE) and NIMH investigations of coping and adaptation, and anxiety and depression in older African Americans, and as co-investigator on a number of NIMH grants including the training of the next generation of HIV investigators. She has numerous publications and presentations in the areas of homelessness, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS and mental health. She has been both a standing and ad hoc member of peer review committees at NIMH.

Dr. Milburn is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association (APA). She has been a member of the APA Committee on Children, Youth and Families, and recently chaired the APA 2009 Presidential Task Force on Psychology’s Contribution to End Homelessness. Her honors include being an inaugural member of the Leadership Institute for Women in Psychology and the Community, Culture and Prevention Science Award from the Society for Prevention Research.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Youth Homelessness, Race, Class, Substance Abuse, Mental Health, Biobehavioral Science

Links to HPRI Research

• Inequity in the Permanent Supportive Housing System in Los Angeles: Scale, Scope and Reasons for Black Residents’ Returns to Homelessness

• Discrimination and Mental Health Problems Among Homeless Minority Young People

• Social Networking Technology, Social Network Composition, and Reductions in Substance Use Among Homeless Adolescents

• Predictors of Close Family Relationships Over One Year Among Homeless Young People

• Countervailing social network influences on problem behaviors among homeless youth

Saba Mwine

Managing Director 
Homelessness Policy Research Institute

[email protected]

Saba Mwine (She/Her/Hers) is the managing director of the Homelessness Policy Research Institute (HPRI), a collaborative of over one hundred researchers and policymakers that accelerate equitable and culturally informed solutions to homelessness in Los Angeles County by advancing knowledge and fostering transformational partnerships between research, policy and practice. She has twenty years of experience spearheading housing justice work throughout the nation: measuring access to housing based on race and other protected classes and supporting equity centered collaborative initiatives in the movement to end homelessness. Saba has played numerous roles, from project designer and civil rights investigator, test coordinator to management consultant, racial equity educator and practitioner. In her tenure at the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), she established their first racial equity initiatives via fundraising, designing grant programming, developing and delivering transformative learnings, and guiding community initiatives. Saba is a classically trained actor and holds a master’s of fine arts in theatre; she is committed to the arts as a tool for healing racial trauma and shaping community spaces. In California and nationally, Saba is a prominent voice in the movement to establish racism and white supremacy culture as the most pervasive and least examined cause and perpetuator of homelessness.

As managing director of HPRI, Saba is responsible for advancing the Institute’s strategic vision to express equity in all activities and engage community with lived experience of homelessness and serves as the lead staff person for all HPRI activities, including conducting and supervising rapid response research, RFP services, and research translation. Additionally, Saba supports the implementation of HPRI’s research agenda and works in close leadership with HPRI’s Race Equity Committee and other stakeholders to establish equity frameworks for key areas of the HPRI’s work. She is also responsible for planning and producing HPRI research symposia and other events and helps conduct policy outreach at the local, state, and national levels.

Specializations:

Race Equity Training, Homelessness, Supportive Housing, Housing, Community-Based Research, Qualitative Research

Links to HPRI Research

• Race Equity Framework for the Connecticut Homeless and Housing System

Michael Nailat

Program Officer
United Way of Greater Los Angeles

[email protected]

Michael Nailat is a Program Officer with the Home For Good team. He is the founder and lead organizer of the Homelessness Analysis Collaborative (HAC), an alliance of researchers and analysts throughout LA County that develop tools and creative approaches to better understanding homelessness and ways to end it. He also oversees the implementation of the Standards of Excellence, community-wide performance goals and quality standards for service and housing providers. Prior to joining the team, Michael served as the Outcomes Unit Manager at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, where he oversaw grantee performance reporting, continuum-wide goal setting, and HMIS report development. He also worked for many years at Search to Involve Pilipino Americans (SIPA), where he developed programs around youth leadership, political engagement, information technology, and music education.

An avid patron of the creative arts, Michael is the founder of Sessions LA, an afterschool DJ and music production program for urban youth, and he also produces the popular podcast “This Filipino American Life.” He also serves as a Steering Committee member for the LA Chapter of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP-LA). In his spare time, he is a freelance grant writer, IT consultant, DJ, photographer, and community organizer. He has a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from USC, and degrees in Social Science and Asian American Studies from UC Irvine.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Grantmaking

Alisa Orduña

Practitioner, Policy Analyst, Collaborator 
Florence Aliese Advancement Network 

[email protected]

Alisa Orduña has been a practitioner, policy analyst, collaborator and thought leader in the urban community development field for the past 25 years. It is her life mission to re-imagine neighborhoods as beloved communities where residents of all diversity have a sense of belonging and resources to thrive. During her career, she has worked on the cutting edge of policy formation and change management in neighborhood development and homelessness services in both the public and nonprofit sectors in major cities including Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Santa Monica, CA.

Alisa entered into the homelessness policy field after serving as a program manager at a large family homeless provider in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The People’s Emergency Center. She then joined the Office of Councilwoman Jannie L. Blackwell, as Director of Special Projects leading the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI) for West Philadelphia while also coordinating and advancing resources for homelessness services. Alisa returned to her hometown of Los Angeles in 2011 where she has since been at the forefront of homelessness policy and has influenced regional-wide strategies including the passage of Prop HHH a city housing bond, advocating for alternatives to police response to mental health and homelessness related calls, and the integration of technology to streamline field-based homelessness outreach programs.

Alisa led this work through prominent roles at the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, the Office of Mayor Eric Garcetti, and most recently the City Manager’s Office in the City of Santa Monica. She has served on the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) Ad-Hoc Committee on Women Experiencing Homelessness and on the Ad-Hoc Committee of Black People Experiencing Homelessness. Alisa is well-respected in the field and has presented in numerous forums including the National Alliance to End Homelessness 2021 Convention, Institute for the Development of Human Arts, the National League of Cities, UCLA, and Otis College. She also sits on the Board of Directors for the Urban Voices Project and volunteers on the Policy Committee for the Downtown Women’s Center. In May 2020, Alisa harnessed her experience and launched her own community development consulting firm, Florence Aliese Advancement Network, LLC (https://florencealieseadvancement.network/).

She is a graduate of Pasadena High School, Xavier University of Louisiana (BA-English), the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (MPIA- Social and Economic Development), and Pacifica Graduate Institute (PhD and MA-Depth Psychology with a specialization in Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Eco-Psychology).

Specializations:

1) Intersectionality of race, gender, and homelessness; 2) gender & violence, 3) developing cultural understanding of mental illness, trauma, and the psyho-social impact of racial and structural violence on the recovery process for Black people experiencing homelessness; 4) facilitating the development of community-based street-engagement interventions (i.e. the Skid Row ReFresh Spot. Downtown Women’s Center Summer Women’s Retreat); and 5) establishing best-practices for public sector engagement including redefining the role of law enforcement and other first responders.

Research Strengths:

Traditional qualitative modes of inquiry including Narrative Inquiry, Phenomenology, Ethnography, Participatory Action Research, and Case Study, as well as  emerging qualitative research approaches including Indigenous research design and analysis, African American women research frameworks  (e.g. EcoWomanism, Black Feminist Thought, Osun Consciousness), Critical Race Theory and Historical Analysis, and Critical Arts Inquiry.

Links to HPRI Research

• Òṣun Consciousness: Unearthing Anti-Black Biases in the Los Angeles Homeless System Soul as reflected in the Sacred Histories of the African American Experience

Howard Padwa

Principal Investigator
Integrated Substance Abuse Programs, UCLA 

[email protected]

Howard Padwa, Ph.D. is a health services researcher and historian at UCLA’s Integrated Substance Abuse Programs (UCLA-ISAP). Dr. Padwa’s research focuses on mental health and substance use disorder (SUD)
services for low-income Californians, including those who experience homelessness. Currently, Dr. Padwa works as part of a team at UCLA-ISAP that provides the California Department of Health Care Services evaluation and technical assistance services related to SUD treatment system development. He is also leading several evaluations of programs that provide housing for individuals with mental health and/or substance use disorders in Los Angeles, and he is Co-Investigator of a PCORI-funded study examining patient-centered outcomes in permanent supportive housing. In addition, Dr. Padwa is leading Resources to Empower Persons Experiencing homelessness in Comparative Trials (Project RESPECT), an effort to improve the patient-centeredness of research on healthcare that affects individuals experiencing homelessness.

Specializations:

Substance use disorder treatment systems, mental health treatment systems, systems transformation, patient-centered behavioral health care, integration of behavioral health with other health and social services, history of behavioral health policy and practice 

Research Strengths:

Qualitative research, implementation science 

Links to HPRI Research

• Homelessness and publicly funded substance use disorder treatment in California, 2016–2019: Analysis of treatment needs, level of care placement, and outcomes

Gary Painter

Director; Professor
USC Homelessness Policy Research Institute; USC Price School of Public Policy

[email protected]

Gary Painter is a Professor in the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. He also serves as the Director of the Homelessness Policy Research Institute. He recently published a co-authored book entitled, “Payment by Results and Social Impact Bonds: Outcome-based Payment Systems in the UK and US.” He has published numerous articles in top journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Urban Economics, Urban Studies, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Real Estate Economics, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, and Regional Science and Urban Economics.

Professor Painter is a leading figure in the field of social innovation. In addition to his recent book, he works extensively with a variety of social innovation organizations and collective impact networks to address some of the grand challenges that society faces. His current research focuses on how to activate the social innovation process. Professor Painter also has extensive expertise in housing, urban economics, and education policy, which shapes his research on how the social innovation process can identify new models of social change within these complex policy areas.

He has served as a consultant for the National Association of Realtors, Pacific Economics Group, Andrew Davidson Co., Fannie Mae, Grant Thorton LLP, Burr Consulting, and the Research Institute for Housing America. Read more.

Specializations:

Urban Economics, Education, Housing, Demographics, Immigrant Integration, Employment, Social Innovation

Econometrics

Links to HPRI Research

• Social Investment in Ending Homelessness

• Social Investment in Ending Homelessness

• Putting Homelessness in Context: The Schools and Neighborhoods of Students Experiencing Homelessness

• Growing up Homeless: Student Homelessness and Educational Outcomes in Los Angeles

• What happens to household formation in a recession?

Manuel Pastor

Director; Professor
USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity; USC Dornsife Departments of Sociology, American Studies & Ethnicity

[email protected]

Dr. Manuel Pastor is Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He currently directs the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) at USC and USC’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII). Pastor holds an economics Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is the inaugural holder of the Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change at USC.

Pastor’s research has generally focused on issues of the economic, environmental and social conditions facing low-income urban communities – and the social movements seeking to change those realities. His current research culminates in the release of his forthcoming book, State of Resistance: What California’s Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Means for America’s Future, in April 2018.

Pastor was the founding director of the Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has received fellowships from the Danforth, Guggenheim, and Kellogg foundations, and grants from the Irvine Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the California Environmental Protection Agency, the W.T. Grant Foundation, The California Endowment, the California Air Resources Board, and many others. Pastor speaks frequently on issues of demographic change, economic inequality, and community empowerment and has contributed opinion pieces to such outlets including the Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury News, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Sacramento Bee, the Huffington Post, among many others.

In January 2002, he was awarded a Civic Entrepreneur of the Year award from the California Center for Regional Leadership. He has previously served as a Public Member of the Strategic Growth Council in California, as a member of the Commission on Regions appointed by California’s Speaker of the State Assembly, and as a member of the Regional Targets Advisory Committee for the California Air Resources Board. Pastor received the Liberty Hill Foundation’s Wally Marks Changemaker of the Yearaward for social justice research partnerships in 2012. In 2017, he received the Champion for Equity Award from the Advancement Project for his work with community-based organizations fighting for social change.

Specializations:

Environment, Race, Urban Inequity, Social Movements, Economics

ECensus Data, Large Datasets, Qualitative Researcher related to Community Organizing and Social Movements

Janey Rountree

Executive Director
California Policy Lab at UCLA

[email protected]

Janey Rountree is the founding Executive Director of the California Policy Lab at UCLA. Prior to joining CPL, she was the Deputy Chief of Staff to Mayor Rahm Emanuel and was responsible for developing and implementing the long-term strategic plan for evidence-based public safety policy, police reform, and violence prevention in Chicago. In addition to direct oversight of the Chicago Police Department, Fire Department and Office of Emergency Management, Janey worked on policy issues that touch on violence prevention but fall outside the traditional scope of public safety, including workforce development, homelessness, education, school climate, youth employment, mentoring, and mental health. During her tenure in Chicago, Janey helped to promote evidence-based policy by working closely with researchers to evaluate publicly funded programs and to scale up the ones that were proven effective. Prior to working in the Chicago Mayor’s Office, she was the Firearms Policy Coordinator senior counsel for New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg. She has practiced law, taught high school, and worked in the non-profit sector. She holds a B.A. from Williams College and a J.D./LL.M from Duke Law School.

Specializations:

Public policy, Public safety, Constitutional policing, Violence prevention, Education, Emergency management, Homelessness

Links to HPRI Research

• Serious Mental Illness among People who are Unsheltered in Los Angeles

• Inequity in the Permanent Supportive Housing System in Los Angeles: Scale, Scope and Reasons for Black Residents’ Returns to Homelessness

• Preventing Homelessness: Evidence-Based Methods to Screen Adults and Families at Risk of Homelessness in Los Angeles

• Fact Sheet: What Research Says About Homeless Prevention Policy Programs

• Predicting and Preventing Homelessness in Los Angeles

Reba A. Stevens

Community Leader 

[email protected]

Reba Stevens is an advocate and activists who experienced homelessness for 21 years in Los Angeles. She has used her experience to promote approaches that will yield the greatest impact for anyone in a housing crisis. She possesses a unique understanding of the mental health, criminal justice, and substance abuse treatment systems in Los Angeles County because of incidents she had with each one. A mental health diagnosis and health resources were the lynchpins to her successful road to recovery and journey out of homelessness. These life changing markers fuel her passion to ensure that mental health and substance abuse screenings and treatment are funded; and accessible and embedded in all facets of service delivery for people experiencing homelessness as well as those who are now housed after being homeless. Reba’s service to community includes numerous cross-departmental appointments to strategic and major bodies that drive policy and practice in homelessness, mental health, criminal justice, and substance abuse areas. She currently serves on the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health-Service Area 6 Advisory Committee, Los Angeles City & County Office of Diversion and Re-entry Prop 47 Steering Committee, Los Angeles County Steering Committee on Black People Experiencing Homelessness, Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health Commission, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Continuum of Care Board, LGBT South Community Advisory Board, SPA 6 Homeless Coalition, USC Homelessness Policy Research Institute and USC/UCLA (PCHOOSE Study) Person-centered, Housing Options, Outcomes Services & Environment and newly appointed to the California Interagency Council on Homelessness Advisory Committee.

Her unabashed voice for equality and humility in serving people experiencing homelessness is largely documented in print and broadcast media such as the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, NBC Universal, Free Your Mind Projects Radio Show, KABC-AM (AM790), Hope on The Horizon MHSOAC News Publication, Making Sense of Measure H: Dr. Mitch Katz and Reba Stevens with Pat Prescott (94.7 The Wave), Unsheltered… New Possibilities TEDx Crenshaw (Ted Talk), and Strategic Concepts in Organizing & Policy Education (SCOPE). Reba is a mother of 4, the fur parent of two lovely Boston Terriers Sage & Star, and a Los Angeles native.

Specializations:

Homelessness, mental health, substance abuse, criminal justice, community advocacy

Clifton Trotter

Director of Equity
Los Angeles homeless Service Authority

[email protected]

Clifton Trotter is the Director of Equity for the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority (LAHSA). As lead of LAHSA’s equity efforts, Clifton’s goal is to institute an equity framework and racial equity plan to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout LAHSA’s practices, procedures, policies, and service delivery. Prior to joining LAHSA, he was the co-lead of the Department of Health Services- Housing for Health Racial Equity Committee and Department Lead for the Workforce Development Aging & Community Services Equity Team. Additionally, he was a member of the County’s Equity Steering Committee, supporting the development of the County’s countywide Equity Summits. He was a recipient of the WDACS Employee Spotlight Award.

Before his tenure with the county, he was a program director for Peace Over Violence, where he lead their Engaging Men Program and facilitated workshops on healthy masculinity, domestic violence, and sexual assault. His experience ranges from managing homeless services for unhoused veterans at the Bell Shelter to managing over 35 high profile accounts as an Account Development Manager at Coca Cola Enterprises. This breadth of experience provides him with a rich perspective that he embodies in his work.

Clifton Trotter is a native of Los Angeles and finds the root of his passion in community uplift. He holds a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration and Masters of Public Administration from California State University Northridge. Clifton resides in Carson with his beautiful wife and two lovely daughters.

Hugo Aguas

Risk Mitigation Program Manager
COVID-19 Response Team
Housing for Health, LA County DHS

[email protected]

Since 2016, Hugo has amassed a range of on-the-ground experience and worked on diverse research opportunities in the movement to end homelessness. After completing his graduate degree at State Los Angeles, Hugo transitioned to case management for The People Concern, where he was the lead-houser on the E6 Generalist Team. After a year of working in the field, he was keen to transition to a role more closely related to his passion for research within homelessness and became a research associate for the Nation Health Care for the Homeless Council (NHCHC).

During the pandemic, he also worked for The Center of Blessed Sacrament in the Westlake/MacArthur Park area, where he took on the role as a service coordinator and, ultimately, a program manager. In this role, he was responsible for ensuring that everyone received equitable housing services at a federally funded Project Roomkey site by following up on one’s health care, housing status, and service continuation despite the surging COVID-19 pandemic. After the project, Hugo worked as a weekend service coordinator at the Downtown Women’s Center until the end of the project in December of 2021.

At the NHCHC, Hugo grew as a researcher and an advocate on the national front. From his work, he has learned to tell a story of systemic failure and depravity, which has been done through the quantification of national data relating to the performance and well-being of federally qualified health centers. He created a fact sheet on COVID-19 in collaboration with
HRSA; facilitated an array of technical assistance trainings relating to race, diabetes, obesity, housing scarcity, etc.; and has presented findings to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. In addition, he has spoken with Alaska Public Radio(a subsidiary of NPR) on the possible development of temporary housing for the homeless in Anchorage. He is proud to be a fierce advocate on the ground and from a research perspective.

Specializations:

Mental health, Housing Instability, COVID-19 in Homeless Health Care, Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Housing and Health Care, Social Stratification, Quantitative Research 

Research Strengths:

Quantitative Research Methods, Data Visualization, Baron and Kenny Methodology, Compiling and Utilizing Large Disaggregated Data Sets 

Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro

Executive Director
Ohio State University Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity

[email protected]

Specializations:

American Politics, Political Theory, Public Policy, Race/Ethnic Politics, Gender Politics, Intersectionality

Links to HPRI Research

• The Path to Justice Runs Through Equity: Ending Anti-Black Racism in Los Angeles

Lourdes Johanna Avelar Portillo

Doctoral Candidate
USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts & Sciences
 [email protected]

Lourdes Johanna Avelar Portillo is a third-year PhD candidate in the Population, Health, and Place program at USC and a Teaching Assistant at the Spatial Sciences Institute. Johanna’s research uses mixed methods to examine the consequences of water insecurity in the lives and health outcomes of people experiencing homelessness. She believes that the provisioning of basic human services such as drinking water, restrooms, showers, and laundry services can serve as immediate interventions to better address homelessness and reduce the risk of infectious diseases, which are reported to have been on the rise in recent years. Johanna’s current work focuses on the community of Skid Row in Los Angeles which examines the inequities in access and provisioning of basic water services based on race, gender, and age. Her research interests include the effects of water insecurity on people experiencing homelessness, particularly disparities in access among vulnerable groups (including women, racial minorities, and undocumented immigrants), and identifying sustainable solutions to better serve the population. Johanna currently volunteers with the Los Angeles Central Providers Collaborative to conduct an audit report on basic services lacking in the community of Skid Row. Prior to joining USC, Johanna’s work focused in water insecurity in Latin America, particularly in rural communities of EL Salvador. Johanna holds a bachelor’s degree in Geography and Environmental Studies from UCLA and a master’s degree in Geography from Cal State Long Beach.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WaSH) Services Delivery, Health and Racial Equity

Qualitative and Quantitative Mixed Methods Research, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Spatial Statistics

Meredith Berkson

Director of Policy and Systems
Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA)

[email protected]

Meredith Berkson is the Director of Policy and Systems at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.  Meredith started her work in homeless services over a decade ago as an intern case manager at Glide Foundation’s Drop-In Center in the Tenderloin of San Francisco, while completing her BA in Sociology at UC Berkeley.  After moving back to Los Angeles, she worked at The People Concern’s Access Center in Santa Monica, and helped the agency pilot and implement Coordinated Entry(CES). She then moved to PATH, first as their Director of Coordinated Entry and then as Regional Director of South County Programs. At PATH she oversaw the SPA 7 CES and the immense growth of the South County Department and service portfolio, including prevention, problem solving, outreach, rapid rehousing, and permanent supportive housing programs. Before joining LAHSA, she consulted with the Los Angeles County Homeless Initiative, providing her direct service lens to their policy work. Meredith is passionate about changing policies and systems to better address the needs of people on the brink of, and experiencing homelessness.

Gary Blasi

Professor of Law Emeritus
UCLA School of Law

[email protected]

Gary Blasi is Professor of Law Emeritus at the UCLA School of Law. For the eight years prior his appointment to the UCLA faculty in 1991, he directed for eight years the Homelessness Litigation Project at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, working closely with both local and national experts in the field. In addition to his legal and research work related to homelessness, especially in Los Angeles, Blasi has for nearly 40 years held leadership positions in nonprofit organizations addressing homelessness and extreme poverty, including terms as President of the National Coalition for the Homeless, Homeless Health Care Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness. He was a founding board member
of both Comic Relief and of Vets Advocacy, Inc. He currently serves as a board officer of the nonprofits Housing Works and Pathways Housing First Institute (of which he is a founding board member, with Sam Tsemberis and Ben Henwood) and a member of the board of Economic Roundtable.

Blasi’s research has focused primarily both on the causes of homelessness and how those causes are understood by researchers, policymakers, and the public, with particular focus on the role of race in such attributions. His work draws on social psychology, especially attribution theory and implicit bias and related theories (e.g., system justification).ii Much of his work examines the public policy, advocacy, and legal system engagement with homelessness.

Blasi has also conducted extensive research regarding homelessness in Los Angeles. In 2007, with scholars at USC and other institutions, Blasi co-authored a report for the Inter-University Consortium Against Homelessness, Ending Homelessness in Los Angeles, which provided support for a policy brief entitled A Reality-Based Approach to Ending Homelessness
in Los Angeles.

In 2006 and 2007, he conducted an extensive empirical evaluation of the
effects on the unhoused of the “Safer Cities Initiative” initiated in 2006 in Skid Row, Policing Our Way Out of Homelessness?: The First Year of the Safer Cities Initiative on Skid Row, as well as the impact of that effort on crime in Skid Row. Professor Blasi took emeritus status in 2012 but continues to conduct research and maintain an active pro bono legal practice, working with community groups and in collaboration with the leading public interest and pro bono law firms in California. In 2013, he received the Loren
Miller Legal Services Award from the State Bar of California, given to one lawyer in California each year for his or her work in extending legal services to the poor. He was named a California Lawyer of the Year in 2015 in for his work on behalf of indigent welfare recipients and a California Lawyer of the Year in 2016 for his work on behalf of homeless military veterans.

Specializations:

a) Intersection of both criminal and civil law and policy with evidence-based research regarding unhoused people, how they come to be unhoused (including, e.g. through eviction) and how they experience homelessness and interventions intended to help them; (b) evaluation of effective interventions to prevent, reduce, ameliorate, or end homelessness; (c) organization and operation of those government, nonprofit, and research entities that potentially contribute to effective interventions; (c) how the public, media, and policy-makers process and contribute to contested understandings of homelessness and the potential responses to it, including the role academic or empirical research plays in that process; (d) the role of race and racism, particularly regarding Black people, in all the foregoing, and the potential effectiveness of anti-racist interventions.

Research Strengths:

I am familiar with basic quantitative methods and tools, from odds ratios and simple descriptive statistics to stepwise logistic regression, but am no longer current in STATA or SAS. I have developed and supervised field surveys and focus groups, and conducted, supervised and/or analyzed hundreds of interviews of people from agency heads to chronically homeless individuals with significant impairments.  I have worked with and supervised the analysis of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and the contents of administrative databases from very basic spreadsheets to enormous government databases.   For 15 years I taught future lawyers (and some other researchers) how to identify, obtain and utilize documents and data obtainable through either the public records laws or discovery in litigation

Links to HPRI Research

• A Grounded Approach to Our Homelessness Crisis

Ricky Bluthenthal

Professor of Preventative Medicine; Associate Dean for Social Justice
Institute for Health Promotion & Disease Prevention
[email protected]

Ricky N. Bluthenthal is the Associate Dean for Social Justice and a Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and the Institute for Prevention Research at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. He received a BA in History and Sociology from the University of California Santa Cruz and a PhD in sociology from the University of California Berkeley. His research has established the effectiveness of syringe exchange programs, tested novel interventions and strategies to reduce HIV risk and improve HIV testing among injection drug users and men who have sex with men, documented how community conditions contribute to health disparities, and examined health policy implementation. His current studies include a randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of a single session intervention to reduce injection initiation risk behaviors among established people who inject drugs and an observational epidemiological study to examine if increased cannabis availability results to decreased opioid use among people who inject drugs. Dr. Bluthenthal has authored or co-authored over 130 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals such as the American Journal of Public Health, Social Science and Medicine, The Lancet, Addiction, and Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research among others.

Lynden Bond

Research Associate
Urban Institute, Metropolitan and Communities Policy Center
[email protected]

Lynden Bond, LMSW, is a researcher and advocate whose work aims to reduce barriers for people experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity in accessing housing and health and behavioral health services. Lynden’s research interests include social determinants of health, housing insecurity, homelessness, and behavioral health. Recent projects have explored service user perspectives on homeless outreach, and examining the experiences of formerly homeless adults living in hotels during COVID-19. Her current research focuses on how housing insecurity and homelessness impact access to mental health and substance use treatment services among emergency department patients. Lynden’s direct-practice experiences include being a clinical supervisor in a homeless outreach program and in a permanent supportive housing program for individuals with histories of homelessness and behavioral health needs. She is passionate about and committed to using community-empowered methods and partnering with people with lived expertise in her research and advocacy. Lynden holds a PhD in Social Work from New York University.

Specializations:

Homelessness and housing, behavioral health, mental health and substance use services, homeless services research, policy

Research Strengths:

Mixed methods research, qualitative research, community-engaged methods

Links to HPRI Research

• “If you’re gonna help me, help me”: Barriers to housing among unsheltered homeless adults

• Weighing the options: Service user perspectives on homeless outreach services

Gretchen Brickson

Associate Director, Los Angeles Program
Corporation for Supportive Housing

[email protected]

Gretchen Brickson is Associate Director of the Corporation for Supportive Housing’s (CSH) Los Angeles Program where she leads capacity-building and housing-healthcare system integration efforts to better serve persons experiencing homelessness. Formerly, she led L.A. Care’s Health Homes Program development, a model designed to integrate physical, psycho-social and behavioral health support for members with chronic conditions, severe mental illness and high acuity (including homelessness). She also served as Senior Director of Managed Long Term Services and Supports (MLTSS) at L.A. Care Health Plan. A program of California’s Coordinated Care Initiative, MLTSS provides services that help individuals remain living independently in the community. MLTSS also oversees extended long-term care provided in a nursing facility. Previously Ms. Brickson was Executive Director of the Los Angeles Jewish Home’s Brandman Centers for Senior Care (BCSC) Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) during its three-year start-up and development period. She also directed Huntington Hospital’s community-focused Senior Care Network and the San Francisco Adult Day Health Network.

Ms. Brickson holds Master’s Degrees in Social Welfare, Business Administration and Public Health from UC-Berkeley and is licensed as a clinical social worker in California. She has extensive experience with PACE and managed care, including nine years at On Lok, the prototype for the PACE model, more than five years with Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program in Northern and Southern California, and three years at L.A. Care Health Plan.

Specializations:

Older adults, healthcare

Jakob Brounstein

PHD Candidate
UC Berkeley

[email protected]

Jakob Brounstein is PhD Candidate in economics at UC Berkeley studying public and labor economics. He specializes in issues related to fiscality, tax avoidance/evasion, and inequality. His current work focuses on the tax externalities of homelessness policy and comprehensively estimating the changes in benefits absorbed and taxes collected in response to changes in individuals’ homelessness status. Jakob holds a BA from Sciences Po and a BA from Columbia University. His overall research agenda strives to inform the discussion on how to most effectively design a public policy environment that promote the equity and empowerment of disenfranchised groups.

Specializations:

tax policy, tax avoidance and evasion, fiscal impacts of public policy, upper- and lower tail economic inequality

Research Strengths:

applied microeconomic and econometric methods

Moshe Buchinsky

Professor
UCLA Department of Economics

[email protected]

Moshe Buchinsky is a Professor of Economics at UCLA. His research develops econometric tools and applies them to labor economics and public finance. Professor Buchinsky wrote seminal papers on quantile regression, using it to analyze changes in the distribution of wages. His other work studies returns to seniority and experience, and the degree of wage mobility. His work has been published in Econometrica, and the Review of Economic Studies among others.

Specializations:

Economics, Public Finance, Wages

Econometrics, Quantile regression

Patrick Burns

Senior Researcher
Economic Roundtable

[email protected]

Patrick joined the Economic Roundtable in 2002, following training in Economic Geography at Clark University, Kent State University and UCLA. He is a public policy researcher specializing in labor market dynamics, poverty, public assistance, housing, displacement, industry change and urban geography, with experience analyzing outcomes for detailed neighborhoods and groups of workers.

Specializations:

Employment, Wages, Housing, Displacement, Public Assistance, Urban Geography, Labor Market Dynamics, Industry Change

Research Strengths:

Compiling, merging and analyzing large public and confidential data sets; GIS-based spatial analysis

Links to HPRI Research

• In Harm’s Way: California Workers at High Risk of Unemployment in the COVID-19 Pandemic

• Locked Out Unemployment and Homelessness in the COVID Economy

• Getting Home: Outcomes from Housing High Cost Homeless Hospital Patients

• Escape Routes: Meta-Analysis of Los Angeles County

• Early Intervention to Prevent Persistent Homelessness: Predictive Models for Identifying Unemployed Workers and Young Adults who become Persistently Homeless

Mike Cassidy

Postdoctoral Research Associate
Princeton University: Center for Health and Wellbeing

[email protected]

Mike Cassidy is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Center for Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University. He is an applied microeconomist whose research spans labor, public, and urban economics, with particular emphases on welfare, education, and health. His current work focuses on homeless families, while his overall research agenda endeavors to understand how people make decisions and how social policy, broadly construed, can help them make better ones. Mike holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.P.A. from Princeton University, and completed his Ph.D. in Economics at Rutgers University.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Housing, Poverty, Health, Education, Welfare, Public Policy

Skills:

Applied microeconomics methods

Katherine Chen

Postdoctoral Fellow
UCLA Fielding School of Public Health

[email protected]

Katherine L. Chen is an internal medicine physician and postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research explores the intersection between housing justice and health equity. Recent projects have examined health outcomes among people displaced in California’s affordable housing crisis, the impact of neighborhood change and residential displacement on chronic illness outcomes, and nonprofit hospitals’ engagement with local housing needs. Dr. Chen trained at UCLA for her M.D. and her Internal Medicine residency before serving as Chief Resident. Through postdoctoral fellowships with the National Clinician Scholars Program and Specialty Training and Advanced Research program, she is currently pursuing a PhD in Health Policy & Management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. For her clinical work, she practices primary care and supervises resident physicians at a Federally Qualified Health Center in Los Angeles.

Specializations:

Housing and health, residential mobility and displacement, interface between health systems and the social determinants of health, population health 

Research Strengths:

Quantitative methods, clinical outcomes and health services research, electronic health record analysis, spatial analysis

Chris Chenet

Senior Technical Advisor
Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority 

[email protected]

Chris Chenet is the Senior Technical Advisor with the Housing Central Command at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA). He specializes in data analytics, quality assurance, program development, and has 7 years of experience specializing in homelessness. Chris’ tenure and successes have included large scale agency-adopted projects, such as Active Contract Management, dashboard development for contract management, SQL automation, and multivariate system models and gaps analyses. Chris leads projects that have resulted in web application development for the Continuum, for instance, he led the development of the Interim Housing Extension Request Application, the Income Calculator Application, and the Interim Housing Quality Assurance Application. The latter is used by LAHSA, DMH, and DHS. Chris also managed a team of analysts that engaged providers on a high-frequency basis for contract, performance, and budgetary topics, in which they provide both coaching and technical assistance. Before joining the Housing Central Command, Chris served as the Manager or Performance Management and as a Homeless Systems Analyst at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. He has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from CSUF and a Bachelor’s in Social Work from APU.

Specializations:

Family Homelessness and Poverty, Performance Management, Grant Management, Performance Analysis

Quantitative methods, Program Evaluation, Performance management and Statistical Analysis of Program Effectiveness

Melissa Chinchilla

Health Services Researcher
VA Greater Los Angeles

[email protected]

Dr. Melissa Chinchilla is a Health Services Researcher with the VA Greater Los Angeles (GLA) HSR&D Center of Innovation (COIN): Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation, and Policy; and an Associate Investigator with the VA Rehabilitation Research and Development (RR&D) Center on Enhancing Community Integration for Homeless Veterans (THRIVe). Prior to joining the VA, Dr. Chinchilla was a Research Scientist with AltaMed Health Service’s Institute for Health Equity, one of the largest Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in the nation, serving over 300,000 low-income patients in Southern California. 

Dr. Chinchilla’s research focuses on the social determinants of health, with an emphasis on housing and homelessness. Among other work, she has conducted research on community integration outcomes of formerly homeless Veterans housed through VA’s largest homeless program, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-VA Supportive Housing (VASH). Her work also focuses on increasing our understanding of Latinx homelessness including barriers to homeless services connection and culturally relevant engagement strategies. Her work has been published in various journals including Cityscape, the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, and the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. She also serves on several local and national committee’s including the National Alliance to End Homelessness’ Research Council and the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Race and Ethnicity Homeless Data Work Group and was appointed by the former Mayor of the City of Los Angeles (Mayor Eric Garcetti) to serve as a Commissioner for the Los Angeles Homelessness Services Authority. 

Dr. Chinchilla earned her doctorate in Urban Studies and Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and holds a Master of Science in Health Policy and Management from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Master of City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a Los Angeles native.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Affordable Housing, Social Determinants of Health

Links to HPRI Research

• Examining the Role of Federally Qualified Health Centers in Homeless Services Connection

• Addressing COVID-19 and Homelessness at a Large Federally Qualified Health Center

• Latinx Homelessness in Los Angeles

• Exploring Community Integration Among Formerly Homeless Veterans in Project‑Based Versus Tenant‑Based Supportive Housing

• Comparing Tenant and Neighborhood Characteristics of the VA’s Project- vs. Tenant-Based Supportive Housing Program in Los Angeles County

Michael Cousineau

Professor of Clinical Medicine
USC Keck School of Medicine, Department of Preventive Medicine and Family Medicine

[email protected]

Michael R. Cousineau is currently Clinical Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Family Medicine at USC. He has a joint appointment in the Sol Price School of Public Policy. He teaches in both the Masters in Public Health program and in the Professionalism and the Practice of Medicine. He attended U.C. Berkeley with an undergraduate degree in genetics and has a masters and a doctorate from the UCLA School of Public Health. His work focuses on health policy and health services and evaluation research, access to care for the low income uninsured, governance and operation of safety-net providers including public hospitals, community-based clinics and health centers; and health needs of vulnerable populations including homeless people.

His work includes studying the impact of initiatives designed to expand health insurance to adults and children, the dynamics of insurance coverage decisions by small businesses, alternative governance of safety net hospitals, and the health and mental health needs of the homeless. He is an expert on the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, having given over 30 talks on the new law to community and professional groups. He has been funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services, the U.S. Health Services and Services Administration, The California Endowment, the Office of Minority Health, Blue Shield Foundation, the California Healthcare Foundation, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He has published in Health Affairs, Medical Care, Public Health Reports, the American Journal of Public Health, Academic Medicine, and Health Services Research.

Specializations:

Health Policy, Healthcare for vulnerable populations, Community-based healthcare, Homelessness, Mental health

Program evaluation

Robynn Cox

Assistant Professor, Ph.D
USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work

[email protected]

Robynn Cox is an assistant professor and a member of the faculty at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. Her research interests include the fields of crime, health, labor, and social and racial inequality. She has primarily focused on understanding the social and economic consequences of mass incarceration. Cox was a 2014-15 Resource Center for Minority Aging Research Scholar at the USC Schaeffer Center, where her research explored the impact of incarceration on health outcomes over the lifespan. Most recently, she received a Russell Sage Foundation Presidential Authority Award to investigate the relationship between perceptions of criminality, race, trust and employment outcomes (with Jennifer Doleac, Benjamin Hansen and Sarah Jacobson). Cox’s research has also been funded by the University of Kentucky’s Center for Poverty Research through the Research Program on Childhood Hunger and the Young Investigator Development Grant.

Her work has been published in various academic and policy outlets such as the Southern Economic Journal and the Economic Policy Institute. In addition, she has presented her research at numerous professional conferences and has been featured on both locally and nationally syndicated radio programs such as NPR. In 2011, she was invited by Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis to take part in a roundtable conversation with Attorney General Eric Holder and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chairwoman Jacqueline Berrien on workforce development and employment strategies of the formerly incarcerated.

Prior to her appointment at USC, Cox served as an assistant professor at Spelman College and a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Economics at Duke University. She earned her master’s degree and doctorate in economics from Georgia State University, where she was awarded the Andrew Young Fellowship. Cox completed her undergraduate studies at Duke University, where she obtained a dual bachelor’s in economics and Spanish and Latin American studies.

Specializations:

Economics, Social and Racial Inequity, Social Work, Education, Mass Incarceration, Health, Wellness, Labor

Links to HPRI Research

• Road Map to a Unified Measure of Housing Insecurity

• Does the Timing of Incarceration Impact the Timing and Duration of Homelessness? Evidence from “The Transitions to Housing” Study

• Roadmap to a Unified Measure of Housing Insecurity

Rashida Crutchfield

Assistant Professor EdD, MSW
Cal State Long Beach School of Social Work

[email protected]

Dr. Rashida Crutchfield is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at California State University, Long Beach. She earned a Master of Social Work at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis and her Doctorate in Educational Leadership from CSULB. She worked for the National Conference for Community and Justice in Long Beach and the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri before serving on the Covenant House California staff. Experience at this Los Angeles shelter for 18-to-24-year-olds experiencing homelessness gave her insight into practice, building rapport and intervention with this population’s strengths, needs and perspectives.

Dr. Crutchfield has been a faculty member in the CSULB School of Social Work since 2007 as field faculty and lecturer. She began as an assistant professor in 2014 with a focus on practice and research in youth homelessness, access to higher education, social and economic development, and social work community practice. She was the Principal Investigator for Phase I of the CSU Office of the Chancellor’s Study on Basic Needs, and Co-Principal Investigator for phases II and III. These studies are the largest of their kind.

Specializations:

Macro Social Work Practitioner, Homelessness, Youth Homelessness, Food Security, Higher Education Access, Race

Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis with an emphasis on recruiting and engaging people who have experienced trauma

Links to HPRI Research

• The Starving Student Narrative: How Normalizing Deprivation Reinforces Basic Need Insecurity in Higher Education

• A systematic review of food insecurity among US students in higher education

• Homelessness and Housing Insecurity in Higher Education: A Trauma‐Informed Approach to Research, Policy, and Practice

• Study of student basic needs

• Under a temporary roof and in the classroom: Service agencies for youth who are homeless while enrolled in community college

Dennis Culhane

Professor; Dana and Andrew Stone Chair in Social Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy
University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice

[email protected]

Dr. Culhane’s primary area of research is homelessness and assisted housing policy. His research has contributed to efforts to address the housing and support needs of people experiencing housing emergencies and long-term homelessness.

Dr. Culhane’s recent research includes studies of vulnerable youth and young adults, including those transitioning from foster care, juvenile justice, and residential treatment services.

Dr. Culhane’s most recent research has focused on homelessness among veterans. From July 2009 – June 2018 he served as Research Director of the National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Dr. Culhane co-directs the Intelligence for Social Policy initiative (ISP), a MacArthur-funded project to promote the development of integrated database systems by states and localities for policy analysis and systems reform.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Youth Homelessness, Housing

Linkage and analysis of administrative data to understand the prevalence and dynamics of homelessness and patterns of multisystem services use

Links to HPRI Research

• Estimated Revenue of the Nonprofit Homeless Shelter “Industry” in the United States: Implications for a More Comprehensive Approach to Unmet Shelter Demand

• Addressing Disaster Vulnerability among Homeless Populations during COVID-19

• Addressing Disaster Vulnerability among Homeless Populations during COVID-19

• Inflection Points in Community-Level Homeless Rates

• Article Understanding Low-Income Hispanic Housing Challenges and the Use of Housing and Homelessness Assistance

Soledad De Gregorio

Associate
Abt Associates
[email protected]

Specializations:

Social policy, homelessness, neighborhoods, women and children, families, K-12 education, schools, teachers

Quantitative methods, econometric techniques, statistical modeling and inference, program evaluation

Links to HPRI Research

• Putting Homelessness in Context: The Schools and Neighborhoods of Students Experiencing Homelessness

• Growing up Homeless: Student Homelessness and Educational Outcomes in Los Angeles

Adrienne Dellinger

Senior Researcher 
Vital Research

[email protected]

Adrienne Dellinger is a Senior Researcher at Vital Research, a research and evaluation consulting firm in Los Angeles. In this role, Adrienne is focused on developing partnerships with organizations, designing and implementing evaluations, and using data visualization to provide real-time, actionable results for projects across community services and education. Adrienne is trained in social research methods with specific expertise in evaluation including design, logic models, instrument design, data collection, and results dissemination. Before joining the Vital Research team in 2012, Adrienne worked in different research and evaluation capacities for over 12 years in universities and the private sector, including the Center for Community College Student Engagement at University of Texas at Austin, the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, the National Opinion Research Center, and the University of Chicago.

Adrienne has her Ph.D. in Social Research Methodology with a focus in program evaluation at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is currently finishing her dissertation focused on sensemaking around data in a community of practice in higher education. She holds a Master of Public Health Degree in Community Health Sciences with a concentration in Women’s Health from the University of Illinois, Chicago and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology from Arizona State University.

Specializations:

Evaluation, Qualitative and Quantitative Mixed Methods Research, Education, Restorative Justice, Homelessness, Youth Workforce Development, Reentry Populations

Tasmin Dhaliwal

Doctoral Candidate
University of Southern California

[email protected]

Tasmin is a PhD candidate in Urban Education Policy at the University of Southern California. She is advised by Katharine Strunk (Michigan State University) and Morgan Polikoff (University of Southern California). Her research includes projects that look within and beyond the school building walls to better understand the mechanisms that drive unequal educational outcomes for marginalized students. Her interests include how factors such as housing instability and homelessness influence student outcomes along with interests related to teacher labor markets, school discipline, and school choice. Tasmin’s research is informed by her time as first and second grade teacher in Houston. Prior to joining the Urban Education Policy Ph.D. program, Tasmin received a master’s degree in Education Policy & Management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a bachelor’s degree in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley.

Specializations:

K-12 education policy, K-12 education, schools & teachers, social policy, homelessness, neighborhoods

Quantitative methods, econometric techniques, statistical modeling and inference, program evaluation

Links to HPRI Research

• Putting Homelessness in Context: The Schools and Neighborhoods of Students Experiencing Homelessness

• Growing up Homeless: Student Homelessness and Educational Outcomes in Los Angeles

Andrea Lane Eastman

Research Assistant Professor

Children’s Data Network 

[email protected]

Dr. Andrea Lane Eastman has been a research assistant professor with the Children’s Data Network at USC since 2019. The Children’s Data Network provides a platform for the linkage and analysis of population-level, administrative data sources to inform children’s policies and programs. She is currently leading a portfolio of research for the Children’s Data Network funded through grants from the Reissa Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, and stewarding a number of data partnerships, including with the Los Angeles County Probation Department.

She is also Co-Director of the Transition Age Youth Research and Evaluation Hub (TAY-Hub) with Professor Mark Courtney at the University of California, Berkeley. The TAY-Hub seeks to improve policies and practices affecting TAY by monitoring outcomes and through applied research that is grounded in engagement with members of the child welfare services community, including those with the lived experience of foster care.

Dr. Eastman’s scholarship has been informed by her previous work in the California State Senate where she served as a legislative aide and committee consultant on several state initiatives surrounding health and human services and public safety. She graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s in Psychology, received her master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy from Pepperdine University, and earned a PhD in Social Work from USC. While obtaining her master’s degree, she provided therapy for families who experienced child maltreatment.

Specializations & Interests:
Dr. Eastman specializes in research related to young people living in and aging out of foster care.

Explore some of her research: https://www.datanetwork.org/

Earl Edwards

Doctoral Candidate 
UCLA Graduate School of Education and Informational Studies

[email protected]

Earl Edwards is a Ph.D. student at the University of California Los Angeles Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. He completed his Master’s Degree in Public School Leadership from Columbia University and received his B.A. in Sociology from Boston College. His current research interests focus on how American public schools can better support youth experiencing homelessness.

Earl has over ten years of professional experience in youth development and curriculum design. As a school administrator and classroom teacher, Earl has designed and facilitated district-wide professional development modules covering data analysis, formative assessments, and effective teaching strategies for students with learning disabilities. Earl also co-authored graduate course curriculums focusing on educational leadership development in urban public schools for Columbia University Teachers College principal certification program. In addition to his expertise in curriculum development, Earl has founded and contributed to several youth development programs that support Black and Latino males across the country.

Specializations:

Student Homelessness

Links to HPRI Research

• Inequity in the Permanent Supportive Housing System in Los Angeles: Scale, Scope and Reasons for Black Residents’ Returns to Homelessness

• Who Are the Homeless? Centering Anti-Black Racism and the Consequences of Colorblind Homeless Policies

• The Unseen and Unsupported Students in Charter Schools

• Hidden Success: Learning From the Counternarratives of High School Graduates Impacted by Student Homelessness

• Young, Black, successful, and homeless: examining the unique academic challenges of Black students who experienced homelessness

Daniel Flaming

President
Economic Roundtable

[email protected]

Daniel is president of the Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit urban research group that identifies actionable solutions that contribute to the sustainability of individuals and communities. He has a Ph.D. in urban studies. The Roundtable’s work includes descriptive analysis of homeless populations and developing predictive analytic models for matching interventions with individual needs. Dan has been with the Roundtable since 1991. Before that he worked for Los Angeles County, managing delinquency prevention, affordable housing, job training, and research programs.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Wage sustainability, Affordable housing

Demographic, economic and property development datasets; Confidential administrative records; Practical application analyses

Links to HPRI Research

• In Harm’s Way: California Workers at High Risk of Unemployment in the COVID-19 Pandemic

• Los Angeles County Homeless Count Data Library: Source Records from Los Angeles Continuum of Care Homeless Counts: 2007 to 2020

• Locked Out Unemployment and Homelessness in the COVID Economy

• Getting Home: Outcomes from Housing High Cost Homeless Hospital Patients

• Escape Routes: Meta-Analysis of Los Angeles County

Andrea Garcia

Physician 
Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health

[email protected]

Dr. Andrea Garcia is a citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, and she is Mexican. Dr. Garcia is a physician at the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health where her clinical work is at the directly operated American Indian Counseling Center. Her other time is spent on community-centered initiatives and research that addresses the social and structural determinants of American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) health.

Through her appointments as a Commissioner with the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission, and her affiliation with the Center for Health Services and Society in the Department of Psychiatry at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, Dr. Garcia has been able to employ community partnered participatory research methods to better understand homelessness among AIAN in Los Angeles County. Though her strengths are in quantitative methodologies she has come to fully appreciate the value of mixed methods, particularly when engaging with communities who are undercounted or misclassified in quantitative data. Dr. Garcia also has interests in AIAN health equity, workforce diversity in the health professions, and is serving as Guest Assistant Editor for the MedEdPORTAL Call for Submissions: American Indian, Alaska Native and Indigenous Perspectives.

Dr. Garcia is a proud graduate of the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program where she obtained her master’s degree in health and medical sciences from UC Berkeley and her medical degree from UCSF. She trained in General and Preventive Medicine and completed a fellowship with the National Clinician Scholars Program at UCLA in research and policy.

Joelle Greene

Director
Harder + Company

[email protected]

Joelle is a highly skilled researcher and evaluator with more than 20 years of experience in the academic and nonprofit sectors. Joelle has expertise in mixed-methods approaches to evaluation and is adept in advanced statistical approaches to data modeling. This includes logistical regression, multivariate analysis, scaling and data reduction techniques. She is also an adept facilitator, and is skilled at guiding diverse groups through a process of learning and planning. Joelle blends these skills with deep knowledge of wide range of issues such as early childhood, housing, mental health services, violence prevention, at-risk youth, and elder services.

Before joining Harder+Company in 2011, Joelle was director of research and evaluation for National Community Renaissance (CORE) and previously served as executive director of evaluation, research and planning for the Urban Education Partnership. Joelle has served as a technical advisory board member of First 5 San Bernardino, and is a former advisory board member and evaluation task force chair for LIFT for Teens. She was also the recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Postdoctoral Fellowship at UCLA. She is an active member of the American Evaluation Association (AEA); she has served as Program Co-Chair of the AEA Business, Leadership and Performance topical interest group, and also presented webinars as part of its professional development series. Joelle can be found most weekends cheering on her daughter from the sidelines of a soccer pitch somewhere in Southern California.

Specializations:

Housing, Employment, Workforce Development, Community Development, Mental Health, Violence Prevention, Youth

Data Modeling, Logistical Regression, Multivariate Analysis, Scaling, Data Reduction

Links to HPRI Research

• Permanent Supportive Housing for Homeless Families Initative: Evaluation Findings

Taylor Harris

Core Investigator

Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation & Policy (CSHIIP)

[email protected]

Taylor Harris, PhD, MA, is a core investigator for the Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation & Policy (CSHIIP) at the VA Greater Los Angeles. Guided by her professional training in the fields of clinical psychology and social work, Dr. Harris’ research agenda focuses on mental health and behavioral health of persons with experiences of homelessness and enhancing housing and services to improve their health outcomes. During her doctoral training at the University of Southern California, she received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse for her dissertation which examined multi-level socioecological factors that affect smoking behavior trajectories from homelessness to housing. At the VA, Dr. Harris served as a post-doctoral fellow through the National Center on Homelessness among Veterans. As a CSHIIP investigator, she serves as the PI for two projects that aim to improve smoking cessation services for homeless-experienced Veterans, and another project examining workforce wellbeing among community-based homeless service providers implementing an evidence-based case management practice.

Topical Interests/Experience related to homelessness:

• Evidence-based practices within homeless services
• Tailoring mental health and behavioral health care for PEH
• Tobacco use, Smoking cessation
• Case manager’s wellbeing, burnout
• Community integration
• Models of supportive housing
• Social support, social networks
• Built environment, socio-environmental factors and their impact on health outcomes
• Street medicine (some experience)

Links to HPRI Research

• Expanding the Understanding of Risk Behavior Associated With Homelessness Among Veterans

• Gender Differences in the Path from Sexual Victimization to HIV Risk Behavior among Homeless Youth

• Mental health change in the transition to permanent supportive housing: The role of housing and social networks

• The Role of Mental Health and Substance Use in Homeless Adults’ Tobacco Use and Cessation Attempts

• Los Angeles Housing Models and Neighborhoods’ Role in Supportive Housing Residents’ Social Integration

Kathryn Henderson

Principal Research Associate
Westat

[email protected]

Dr. Kathryn Henderson is a Principal Research Associate at Westat with 20 years of experience conducting mixed-methods research and evaluations on homeless service delivery systems, housing, employment programs, and health initiatives for youth, families, individuals, and older adults. She is currently managing evaluations of HUD’s Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program and the current 5-year strategy for Hilton Foundation’s Homelessness Initiative and recently completed an evaluation of a ten-year systems initiative in three counties in Washington State for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to joining Westat, Dr. Henderson received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Indiana University and completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina.

Specializations:

Program, policies, and systems initiatives to meet the needs of vulnerable and underserved populations, homelessness and housing, social determinants of health

Research Strengths:

Expertise in the use of mixed methods research and evaluation, including: study design; the development of data collection instruments; collection and analysis of qualitative focus group and interview data; and quantitative data analysis, including analysis of longitudinal and large administrative datasets using a range of multivariate analytic techniques. 

Links to HPRI Research

• Evaluation of the HUD Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program: Early Implementation Report

• A Decade of Innovation: The Puget Sound Family Homelessness Initiative

Benjamin Henwood

Assistant Professor
USC Dworak-Peck School of Social Work

[email protected]

Benjamin Henwood, PhD, LCSW, is a recognized expert in health and housing services research whose work connects clinical interventions with social policy. Dr. Henwood has specific expertise in permanent supportive housing and on improving care for adults experiencing homelessness and serious mental illness, as well as in the integration of primary and behavioral health care. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (including the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, and National Institute on Aging) and he has served as the methodological lead for the Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count since 2017, which is the largest unsheltered count in the United States. He is a co-author of a book on Housing First published by Oxford University Press, and is the co-lead the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare’s Grand Challenge to End Homelessness. Dr. Henwood is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work.

Specializations:

Health and social service delivery; homelessness; permanent supportive housing and housing first, integrated physical and behavioral healthcare

Qualitative and mixed methods design; ecological momentary assessment

Links to HPRI Research

• 2022 Los Angeles Homeless Count: Understanding the Estimates from the Annual Point-in-Time (PIT) Count

• Los Angeles Housing Models and Neighborhoods’ Role in Supportive Housing Residents’ Social Integration

• Under Threat: Surveying Unhoused Angelenos in the Era of Camping Enforcement

• Road Map to a Unified Measure of Housing Insecurity

• Does the Timing of Incarceration Impact the Timing and Duration of Homelessness? Evidence from “The Transitions to Housing” Study

Sofia Herrera

Director of Research, Planning & Policy
Urban Initiatives

[email protected]

Sofia Herrera, PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist who is involved in several activities in the field of community psychology. She is a research faculty member at the Graduate School of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary and is also the Director of the seminary’s Office for Urban Initiatives. She is also the founder of the Institute for Community Psychology which is one of several community-based and faith-based institutes that partner under the non-profit, non-partisan Institute for Urban Initiatives. She is a member of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and an Associate of the Mount Calvary Benedictine Retreat House and Monastery. She is also a passionate follower of the teachings of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz and Teresa of Avila.

Specializations:

Links to HPRI Research

• Responding to Intimate Partner Violence and Homelessness in Los Angeles County during a Time of COVID-19

• Separate yet Connected: Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence and Homelessness in Los Angeles County during COVID-19

• Responding to Intimate Partner Violence and Homelessness in Los Angeles County during a Time of COVID-19

• Responding to Intimate Partner Violence and Homelessness in Los Angeles County during a Time of COVID-19

Carter Hewgley

Director of Homeless Initiatives
United Way of Greater Los Angeles

[email protected]

Carter is an Adjunct Professor of Applied Analytics at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and is the Director of Homeless Initiatives at the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, where he focuses on building the evidence base, resources, and strategic coalition to end homelessness in LA County. He is the former Senior Advisor at the D.C. Department of Human Services, where he oversaw efforts to increase permanent housing exits, expand daytime service centers, launch shelter diversion programs, implement harm reduction in low barrier shelters, and strategically transition the family system away from a motel-sheltering model. Prior to working specifically working on homelessness, Carter was the Director of Analytics & Performance at the Center for Government Excellence at JHU and spent his career helping state, local and federal governments use data and evidence to solve problems big and small. Carter established the Enterprise Analytics Division at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, served as the Associate Director of Strategy & Performance at DC Public Schools and was an advisor to the Mayor and DC City Administrator on health and human services.

After graduating from Miami University with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and a Bachelor of Arts in Public Administration, Carter received a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Specializations:

Health, Human Services, Homelessness, Emergency Management/Disaster Response, Special Education

Leveraging quantitative analytical methods and data science in an applied context, where those tools and techniques are leveraged for near real-time system improvements for public administrators.

Sarah Hunter

Senior Behavioral Scientist
Rand Corporation

[email protected]

Sarah Hunter is a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. She currently assists in quality assurance for the RAND Justice, Infrastructure, and Environment unit. Hunter’s primary areas of interest are improving services for vulnerable populations; building community capacity for evidence-based program delivery; health care integration; implementation science; and program evaluation. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and RAND publications in a wide range of fields. Hunter currently serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment. She has served as core faculty at the Implementation Research Institute at Washington University and on several grant review panels for the National Institutes of Health, most recently as a standing study section member for the Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health committee. Prior to joining RAND as a full-time researcher, Hunter was a Project Air Force summer associate for two years. Hunter received her B.A. from New York University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Specializations:

Healthcare, Mental Health, Substance Abuse

Program Evaluation

Links to HPRI Research

• The relationship between quality of housing and quality of life: evidence from permanent supportive housing

• Health Service Utilization and Costs at the Outset of a Permanent Supportive Housing Program

• Local Evaluation Report for Los Angeles County’s Mentally Ill Offender Crime Reduction (MIOCR) Program

• Los Angeles County Office of Diversion and Reentry’s Supportive Housing Program A Study of Participants’ Housing Stability and New Felony Convictions

• Estimating the Size of the Los Angeles County Jail Mental Health Population Appropriate for Release into Community Services

Va Lecia Adams Kellum

President & CEO
St. Joseph Center

[email protected]

President & CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum joined St. Joseph Center in 2008, bringing extensive experience in nonprofit management to the agency. During her tenure, St. Joseph Center has more than doubled in size, expanded its range of services, and broadened the organization’s geographic reach to include underserved communities in South Los Angeles.

Dr. Adams Kellum is the former Chair of the Westside Coalition and represented Service Planning Area 5 on the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Coordinating Council for many years. In February 2017 she was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to the newly established No Place Like Home Program Advisory Committee, which was established to assist and advise the California Department of Housing and Community Development on the program’s successful implementation.

Dr. Adams Kellum graduated with a B.A. from the University of Southern California and earned an M.A. from Ball State University before completing her Ph.D. at Stanford University. Throughout her doctoral program, she examined the factors that create stress in ethnic minority youth, such as poverty, academic underachievement, and family dynamics. Prior to coming to St. Joseph Center, Dr. Adams Kellum applied her research for six years as the Director of Transitional Living for United Friends of the Children (UFC). While at UFC, she helped create and oversee Pathways, an 18-month transitional living program that assists former foster youth with housing, college readiness, career development, financial assistance, mentoring, and individual counseling.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Youth Homelessness, Race, Equity, Food Insecurity, Employment

Andrea Iloulian

Strategic Advisor
Homeless Initiative and Affordable Housing, LA County CEO

[email protected]

Andrea Iloulian is a Strategic Advisor to the LA County CEO for the Homeless Initiative and Affordable Housing. She previously managed the the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s domestic grantmaking in the area of chronic homelessness. Prior to joining the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Iloulian worked in commercial property management, where she served as property manager of Class A high rise office buildings in the downtown and Miracle Mile areas of Los Angeles. Iloulian also previously held positions with TreePeople, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s PLACE Program, and served as a senior consultant at MAXIMUS. She holds a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy and a bachelor’s degree in social ecology from the University of California, Irvine.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Grantmaking

Mazharul Islam

Director of Data Management
Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA)

[email protected]

Mazharul Islam is the Director of Data Management at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA). Islam provides leadership for the continued development of innovation, advanced capabilities to foster collaboration, knowledge management and data visualization at the agency. He has over 15 years of experience in the information management and technology field encompassing responsibility for knowledge management, IT customer service, systems support, and applied information management training. Prior to joining LAHSA, he managed Support Services department at the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA). In this role, he managed portfolio of over 14,000 landlords participating in the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program and was responsible for the provision of information technology services at the Section 8 department. He is interested in data organization strategies and predictive analytics to assist with combating homelessness

Specializations:

Affordable Housing, Homelessness

Information Management and Technology, Predictive analytics

Aras Jizan

Portfolio Lead for Data and Technology
Built for Zero
Community Solutions 

[email protected]

Aras is the Head of Data and Technology for the Built for Zero initiative at Community Solutions. In this role, he leads a team that develops and deploys metrics, tools, and trainings that empower communities to leverage data analytics in their work to end homelessness. Prior to joining Community Solutions, Aras worked as a consultant specializing in the measurement and evaluation of food security projects in the developing world. Aras holds degrees from the University of Toronto and UCLA, served on the Biden-Harris Transition Team, and sits on the board of Our Minds Matter, a nonprofit organization working toward the day when no teenager turns to suicide.

Specializations:

Data for improvement, homelessness, data science

Research Strengths:

Applied statistics, data integrations

Melissa King

Principal
People’s Health Solutions 

[email protected]

Melissa King, PhD, MPA, is Principal of People’s Health Solutions (PHS), a team of scientists and artists whose mission is to help build healthy and sustainable communities. In this role, she is helping health systems, homeless service providers, foundations, and policy and advocacy organizations have a greater impact through program planning and evaluation, needs assessment and asset mapping, and data visualization and storytelling.

A social and behavioral scientist, Dr. King uses applied and community-based participatory approaches to understand the myriad of factors that influence health and human behavior. Most recently, she was a researcher and co-instructor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health, where her focus was primary care and mental health integration. She has since partnered with community organizations throughout Los Angeles County to identify best practices for engaging vulnerable youth in health and housing services.

A former science journalist, Dr. King has 20 years of experience in health communication that she pairs with academic training in quantitative methods to address timely policy research questions. She has served as an implementation researcher on state programs including Children’s Behavioral Health Initiative in Massachusetts and American Academic of Pediatrics Building Mental Wellness in Ohio. She has also partnered with homeless service providers and coalitions to conduct program evaluations and facilitate community strategic planning processes.

Dr. King holds a PhD in Social & Behavioral Sciences from Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Public Affairs from The University of Texas at Austin. Her academic research is centered around the ways that community engagement and organizational culture/climate contribute to the implementation of effective public health initiatives. She has also presented on the application of social capital theory to anti-poverty and public housing programs.

Dr. King is dedicated to health equity and social justice, and is an active volunteer with organizations including Los Angeles LGBT Center and Institute for Nonviolence in Los Angeles. She is a member of the American Public Health Association, American Evaluation Association, and National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation.

Specializations:

Housing and homelessness (with particular focus on transition-age youth), primary care and mental health integration, community safety, racial and gender equity, and intimate partner violence

Links to HPRI Research

• Los Angeles City and County Health Service Coordination for People Experiencing Homelessness Rapid Response Landscape Analysis

• Responding to Intimate Partner Violence and Homelessness in Los Angeles County during a Time of COVID-19

• Separate yet Connected: Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence and Homelessness in Los Angeles County during COVID-19

• Responding to Intimate Partner Violence and Homelessness in Los Angeles County during a Time of COVID-19

• Responding to Intimate Partner Violence and Homelessness in Los Angeles County during a Time of COVID-19

Chris Ko

Director, Homeless Initiatives
United Way of Greater Los Angeles

[email protected]

Chris Ko serves as the Director of Homeless Initiatives for the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, managing Home For Good, LA’s collective plan to end homelessness. In this role, he leads California’s largest community-based effort to end homelessness and developed the Coordinated Entry System, which went onto became a national model.

He has enjoyed seeing different approaches to social change, being an officer at an after school program in West Philadelphia, managing IT at a Liberian Refugee Camp Self-Help Initiative, and serving as an economic development policy aide for the Mayor’s Office. The Coro Foundation also named him a Public Affairs Leadership fellow through which he worked for the D.A., SEIU, KPCC, and LAUSD.

Chris was an Urban Studies major at the University of Pennsylvania and was also named one of Next City’s 40-under-40 Vanguards. Previously, he served on the boards of Coro Southern CA and the Supply Education Group.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Veteran Homelessness, Needs Assessments, Systems Change

Alexis Coulourides Kogan

Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and Geriatrics
USC Keck School of Medicine

[email protected]

Alexis Coulourides Kogan, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and Geriatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and holds a joint appointment in the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. She is also a Fellow of the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics and affiliate member of the USC Gehr Family Center for Health Systems Science
and Innovation.

Coulourides Kogan holds a PhD and master’s degree in gerontology from USC, and a bachelor’s of science degree in exercise and sport sciences from Tulane University. She was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Keck School of Medicine of USC’s Department of Family Medicine and Geriatrics before joining the faculty in 2018 with a K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Career Development award from the National Institutes on Aging (NIH).

Dr. Kogan is a multi- and mixed-methods health systems researcher that focuses on intervention development, translation, and measurement of person-centered models of care and education for older adults and individuals with serious illness. Her work focuses on outpatient
primary care settings and home-based care models to better meet the physical health and service needs of older adults, individuals with serious illness, caregivers, and special populations (i.e. persons experiencing unsheltered homelessness). Dr. Kogan has a special interest in person-centered care, advance care planning, and palliative care delivered where a person calls “home.”

Specializations:

Person-centered care, palliative care, end-of-life, gerontology,
primary care, street medicine

Research Strengths:

Qualitative research, intervention development

Jennifer Kottke

Homeless Education Coordinator II, Division of Student Support Services
Los Angeles County Office of Education

[email protected]

Jennifer Kottke began her educational career as a classroom teacher in 1997. She largely taught upper-grade students in neighborhoods with high-density populations, high rates of poverty and homelessness, and high rates of community violence. In 2001 she became involved in homeless education through a Friday night program where we would provide meals, crafts, and parent education for families experiencing homelessness within her district. Following this, Jennifer took on increasing responsibilities at her school site and then within her school district on the implementation of McKinney-Vento rights and services. She was the Homeless Education administrator for the district until 2015 when she took a position at the County Office of Education. For a brief spell, she was coordinating services for Foster Youth Services and then returned to Homeless Education in 2019. Jennifer now serves as the Homeless Education Coordinator for the County of Los Angeles. She serves and supports 80 districts and over 300 charter schools as they serve and support their students experiencing homelessness.

Specializations:

Working with high-risk/at-risk student populations, particularly students experiencing homelessness and students in foster care. 

Leadership capacity building including program design, implementation, and building strong internal teams for effective services.  

Quantitative research analyzing piloting curriculum prior to implementation at school sites, and research focused on the perceptions of caregivers and their role in supporting students in foster care.  

Randall Kuhn

Associate Professor, Department of Community Health Services
UCLA Fielding School of Public Health

[email protected]

Randall Kuhn (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1999) is a demographer and sociologist who employs a wide array of research methods and data to study the social determinants of health, health program evaluation, and the health-development nexus. He has conducted seminal research on the impacts of migration on health. In Bangladesh, he leads a 35-year evaluation of the effects of randomized child and reproductive health interventions on health and socioeconomic change across generations. His cross-national research and forecasts explore the effectiveness of global health policies and the role of improvements in health as a driver of social and political change. Kuhn’s methodological expertise includes longitudinal data analysis, experimental and quasi-experimental research design, forecasting, and novel uses of administrative data.

As Director of the Global Health Affairs Program at the University of Denver, Kuhn developed an innovative curriculum for applied decision-making and program design in global health. He tripled enrollments, placed graduates at leading global health agencies, and built a programmatic emphasis on the health and human rights of disabled, LGBTQ, indigenous, and migrant populations as an essential component of achieving global health justice and equity for all. Kuhn founded the Goal 18 campaign for inclusive UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Specializations:

Aging, Maternal and Child Health, Demography, Global Health, Health Disparities, Health Surveillance Programs, Migration and Immigrant Health, Physical and Social Environmental Determinants of Health, Population Health

Program Planning and Evaluation, Research Methods

Links to HPRI Research

• 2022 Los Angeles Homeless Count: Understanding the Estimates from the Annual Point-in-Time (PIT) Count

• Under Threat: Surveying Unhoused Angelenos in the Era of Camping Enforcement

Kate Leifheit

Postdoctoral Fellow
UCLA Fielding School of Public Health

[email protected]

Kate Leifheit is a social epidemiologist and postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles Fielding School of Public Health in the Department of Health Policy and Management. Her research seeks to identify social policy levers to improve population health and health equity, with a focus on housing policy. Recent work evaluates effects of evictions and eviction policies on child health and population health outcomes.

Specializations:

Interventions to prevent homelessness (e.g. eviction moratoriums, rent relief, and right to legal counsel in rent courts) and promote housing affordability (e.g. single family zoning bans, broader anti-poverty measures). 

Research Strengths:

Kate’s work draws from methods in descriptive epidemiology, demography, longitudinal and multilevel modeling, spatial statistics, and causal inference. Kate’s strengths are largely quantitative, though she has enjoyed collaborating with qualitative researchers on mixed methods research. 

Compiling, merging and analyzing large public and confidential data sets; GIS-based spatial analysis

Josh Leopold

Senior Research Associate, Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center
Urban Institute

[email protected]

Josh Leopold is a senior research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where his work focuses on homelessness and affordable housing policy.

Before joining Urban, Leopold was a management and program analyst at the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH). At USICH, he helped implement the Obama administration’s plan for ending chronic homelessness and homelessness among veterans by 2015; he also helped develop a national research agenda related to homelessness. From 2006 to 2011, he worked as an analyst for Abt Associates, where he was involved in numerous studies, including the Annual Homeless Assessment Report; the Costs of Homelessness study; the Study of Rents and Rent Flexibility in Subsidized Housing; and an evaluation of the AmeriCorps program.

Leopold has a bachelor’s degree from Grinnell College, Iowa, and a master’s degree in information science from the University of Michigan.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Housing, Race, Veteran Homelessness, Housing Finance, Poverty, Vulnerability, Saftey Net

Links to HPRI Research

• Costs and Offsets of Providing Supportive Housing to Break the Homelessness-Jail Cycle

• Final Report and Recommendations on Homelessness in Alameda County, California

• Show Me Healthy Housing: Final Evaluation Report

• Supportive Housing Organizational Capacity Assessment Tool

• Evaluation of the 100,000 Homes Campaign: Assessing the Campaign’s Effectiveness in Housing the Chronically and Vulnerable Homeless

Anne Miskey

Chief Executive Officer
Union Station Homeless Services

Anne Miskey serves as Chief Executive Officer of Union Station Homeless Services. Anne is a nationally recognized expert on strategic, innovative, and effective solutions to ending homelessness. She is a passionate proponent of the most vulnerable in society and of creating long term, positive change and strong systems that support those experiencing poverty, violence, racism and homelessness. Anne has been invited on numerous occasions to speak at the White House on topics including women and youth homelessness. She also worked on former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Joining Forces Campaign to help veterans. Anne has worked closely with the federal departments of Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Labor to champion support for vulnerable families and individuals in the areas of housing, health, and employment. A sought-after speaker and leader in the community Anne fosters conversations about the systemic issues that are driving homelessness and debunking myths about those experiencing homelessness. In addition, Anne has been nominated as a woman CEO showing leadership during times of chaos by the Los Angeles Business Journal in conjunction with their Women’s Leadership Series and Awards.

Locally, Anne is the co-chair of the Business Oversight Committee of Councilmember John Kennedy’s “We Must Breathe” advisory group to help Pasadena businesses and organizations achieve racial equality in order to maximize operational efficiency. She has also served on the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) Ad Hoc Committee on Women’s Homelessness as well as the Steering Committee for the Provider Alliance, a network of over 70 non-profit organizations working on homelessness. In addition she sits on the National Board for the Technical Assistance Collaborative (TAC), a non-profit dedicated to the intersection of human services, healthcare and affordable housing. Prior to joining Union Station Homeless Services, Anne was the CEO of the Downtown Women’s Center (DWC) and first ever Executive Director of Funders Together to End Homelessness. Her more than 25 years working in both the corporate and non-profit sectors has given her a unique perspective on the intersection of non-profits, governments and communities in effecting and supporting an end to major social problems. Originally from Arizona, Anne lived for much of her life in both western and central Canada. She received a BA in history and theater from the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, and her Masters of Divinity degree from the University of Toronto.

Jennifer Mosley

Associate Professor
University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration

[email protected]

Jennifer E. Mosley is an associate professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. Her research broadly focuses on the political engagement of nonprofit and community based organizations, particularly in the areas of homeless services and child welfare. Recent projects have explored the relationship between advocacy and improved democratic representation, how organizations balance self-interest with larger community goals, and how public administration and nonprofit management trends, particularly collaborative governance and contracting, affect nonprofits’ advocacy role. She has a Ph.D. and an M.S.W. from the University of California, Los Angeles and a B.A. from Reed College. Her research has been published in a variety of journals from different fields, including the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Social Service Review, and Urban Affairs Review.

Specializations:

Nonprofit Organizations, Human Services, Policy Formulation & Implementation, Collaborative Governance, Advocacy, Homelessness

Mixed methods research, survey research, stakeholder interviews, comparative case study analysis

Links to HPRI Research

• How Structural Variations in Collaborative Governance Networks Influence Advocacy Involvement and Outcomes

• Homeless Services Continuums of Care: A Report of Research Findings

• Inclusivity and Innovation in Homeless Services: Findings from a National Study of Homeless Continuums of Care

• Understanding the Collaborative Planning Process in Homeless Services: Networking, Advocacy, and Local Government Support May Reduce Service Gaps

• “We Are Not Just a Band-Aid”: How Homeless Service Providers in Chicago Carry out Policy Advocacy

Saba Mwine

Managing Director 
Homelessness Policy Research Institute

[email protected]

Saba Mwine (She/Her/Hers) is the managing director of the Homelessness Policy Research Institute (HPRI), a collaborative of over one hundred researchers and policymakers that accelerate equitable and culturally informed solutions to homelessness in Los Angeles County by advancing knowledge and fostering transformational partnerships between research, policy and practice. She has twenty years of experience spearheading housing justice work throughout the nation: measuring access to housing based on race and other protected classes and supporting equity centered collaborative initiatives in the movement to end homelessness. Saba has played numerous roles, from project designer and civil rights investigator, test coordinator to management consultant, racial equity educator and practitioner. In her tenure at the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), she established their first racial equity initiatives via fundraising, designing grant programming, developing and delivering transformative learnings, and guiding community initiatives. Saba is a classically trained actor and holds a master’s of fine arts in theatre; she is committed to the arts as a tool for healing racial trauma and shaping community spaces. In California and nationally, Saba is a prominent voice in the movement to establish racism and white supremacy culture as the most pervasive and least examined cause and perpetuator of homelessness.

As managing director of HPRI, Saba is responsible for advancing the Institute’s strategic vision to express equity in all activities and engage community with lived experience of homelessness and serves as the lead staff person for all HPRI activities, including conducting and supervising rapid response research, RFP services, and research translation. Additionally, Saba supports the implementation of HPRI’s research agenda and works in close leadership with HPRI’s Race Equity Committee and other stakeholders to establish equity frameworks for key areas of the HPRI’s work. She is also responsible for planning and producing HPRI research symposia and other events and helps conduct policy outreach at the local, state, and national levels.

Specializations:

Race Equity Training, Homelessness, Supportive Housing, Housing, Community-Based Research, Qualitative Research

Links to HPRI Research

• Race Equity Framework for the Connecticut Homeless and Housing System

Michael Nailat

Program Officer
United Way of Greater Los Angeles

[email protected]

Michael Nailat is a Program Officer with the Home For Good team. He is the founder and lead organizer of the Homelessness Analysis Collaborative (HAC), an alliance of researchers and analysts throughout LA County that develop tools and creative approaches to better understanding homelessness and ways to end it. He also oversees the implementation of the Standards of Excellence, community-wide performance goals and quality standards for service and housing providers. Prior to joining the team, Michael served as the Outcomes Unit Manager at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, where he oversaw grantee performance reporting, continuum-wide goal setting, and HMIS report development. He also worked for many years at Search to Involve Pilipino Americans (SIPA), where he developed programs around youth leadership, political engagement, information technology, and music education.

An avid patron of the creative arts, Michael is the founder of Sessions LA, an afterschool DJ and music production program for urban youth, and he also produces the popular podcast “This Filipino American Life.” He also serves as a Steering Committee member for the LA Chapter of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP-LA). In his spare time, he is a freelance grant writer, IT consultant, DJ, photographer, and community organizer. He has a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from USC, and degrees in Social Science and Asian American Studies from UC Irvine.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Grantmaking

Deyanira Nevárez Martínez

Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning

Michigan State University

[email protected]

Deyanira Nevárez Martínez is an assistant professor in the Urban & Regional Planning Program at Michigan State University. Prior to joining the program in the fall of 2021, she earned a PhD in Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy with an emphasis in Chicano/Latino Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Nevárez Martínez is an ethnographer who primarily employs qualitative methods. Her research has focused on the role of the state in homelessness and housing precarity and informality. A major theme in her work is the criminalization of poverty in the United States.

Derek Novacek

Research Psychologist, Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare System
Assistant Project Scientist, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA
[email protected]

Derek Novacek is a Research Psychologist at the Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare System and an Assistant Project Scientist in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA. His research focuses on identifying sociocultural factors that influence the mental health and community integration of Veterans who have experienced homelessness. His work has been published in various academic journals including the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, Psychiatry Research, Health and Social Care in the Community, and Traumatology. Dr. Novacek holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Emory University and a BA in Psychology from the University of Notre Dame. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Advanced Fellowship in Mental Illness Research and Treatment.

Links to HPRI Research

• Examining racial differences in community integration between black and white homeless veterans

• Racial Differences in the Psychosocial Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Veterans With Psychosis or Recent Homelessness

• Socioeconomic challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic for Veterans with psychosis or recent homelessness

• The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health and functional outcomes in Veterans with psychosis or recent homelessness: A 15-month longitudinal study

Alisa Orduña

Practitioner, Policy Analyst, Collaborator 
Florence Aliese Advancement Network 

[email protected]

Alisa Orduña has been a practitioner, policy analyst, collaborator and thought leader in the urban community development field for the past 25 years. It is her life mission to re-imagine neighborhoods as beloved communities where residents of all diversity have a sense of belonging and resources to thrive. During her career, she has worked on the cutting edge of policy formation and change management in neighborhood development and homelessness services in both the public and nonprofit sectors in major cities including Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Santa Monica, CA.

Alisa entered into the homelessness policy field after serving as a program manager at a large family homeless provider in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The People’s Emergency Center. She then joined the Office of Councilwoman Jannie L. Blackwell, as Director of Special Projects leading the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI) for West Philadelphia while also coordinating and advancing resources for homelessness services. Alisa returned to her hometown of Los Angeles in 2011 where she has since been at the forefront of homelessness policy and has influenced regional-wide strategies including the passage of Prop HHH a city housing bond, advocating for alternatives to police response to mental health and homelessness related calls, and the integration of technology to streamline field-based homelessness outreach programs.

Alisa led this work through prominent roles at the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, the Office of Mayor Eric Garcetti, and most recently the City Manager’s Office in the City of Santa Monica. She has served on the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) Ad-Hoc Committee on Women Experiencing Homelessness and on the Ad-Hoc Committee of Black People Experiencing Homelessness. Alisa is well-respected in the field and has presented in numerous forums including the National Alliance to End Homelessness 2021 Convention, Institute for the Development of Human Arts, the National League of Cities, UCLA, and Otis College. She also sits on the Board of Directors for the Urban Voices Project and volunteers on the Policy Committee for the Downtown Women’s Center. In May 2020, Alisa harnessed her experience and launched her own community development consulting firm, Florence Aliese Advancement Network, LLC (https://florencealieseadvancement.network/).

She is a graduate of Pasadena High School, Xavier University of Louisiana (BA-English), the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (MPIA- Social and Economic Development), and Pacifica Graduate Institute (PhD and MA-Depth Psychology with a specialization in Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Eco-Psychology).

Specializations:

1) Intersectionality of race, gender, and homelessness; 2) gender & violence, 3) developing cultural understanding of mental illness, trauma, and the psyho-social impact of racial and structural violence on the recovery process for Black people experiencing homelessness; 4) facilitating the development of community-based street-engagement interventions (i.e. the Skid Row ReFresh Spot. Downtown Women’s Center Summer Women’s Retreat); and 5) establishing best-practices for public sector engagement including redefining the role of law enforcement and other first responders.

Research Strengths:

Traditional qualitative modes of inquiry including Narrative Inquiry, Phenomenology, Ethnography, Participatory Action Research, and Case Study, as well as  emerging qualitative research approaches including Indigenous research design and analysis, African American women research frameworks  (e.g. EcoWomanism, Black Feminist Thought, Osun Consciousness), Critical Race Theory and Historical Analysis, and Critical Arts Inquiry.

Links to HPRI Research

• Òṣun Consciousness: Unearthing Anti-Black Biases in the Los Angeles Homeless System Soul as reflected in the Sacred Histories of the African American Experience

Gary Painter

Director; Professor
USC Homelessness Policy Research Institute; USC Price School of Public Policy

[email protected]

Gary Painter is a Professor in the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. He also serves as the Director of the Homelessness Policy Research Institute. He recently published a co-authored book entitled, “Payment by Results and Social Impact Bonds: Outcome-based Payment Systems in the UK and US.” He has published numerous articles in top journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Urban Economics, Urban Studies, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Real Estate Economics, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, and Regional Science and Urban Economics.

Professor Painter is a leading figure in the field of social innovation. In addition to his recent book, he works extensively with a variety of social innovation organizations and collective impact networks to address some of the grand challenges that society faces. His current research focuses on how to activate the social innovation process. Professor Painter also has extensive expertise in housing, urban economics, and education policy, which shapes his research on how the social innovation process can identify new models of social change within these complex policy areas.

He has served as a consultant for the National Association of Realtors, Pacific Economics Group, Andrew Davidson Co., Fannie Mae, Grant Thorton LLP, Burr Consulting, and the Research Institute for Housing America. Read more.

Specializations:

Urban Economics, Education, Housing, Demographics, Immigrant Integration, Employment, Social Innovation

Econometrics

Links to HPRI Research

• Social Investment in Ending Homelessness

• Social Investment in Ending Homelessness

• Putting Homelessness in Context: The Schools and Neighborhoods of Students Experiencing Homelessness

• Growing up Homeless: Student Homelessness and Educational Outcomes in Los Angeles

• What happens to household formation in a recession?

Fabricia da Hora Pereira

Principal Researcher
Human Rights Centers
Ministério Público do Distrito Federal e Territórios (MPDFT)

 [email protected]

Fabricia da Hora Pereira, PhD in Public Policy, is Principal Researcher for Human Rights Centers, at Ministério Público do Distrito Federal e Territórios (MPDFT) in Brasília, Brazil, where she designs, evaluates, and implements programs and initiatives to address the shelters, social service, health and violation of human rights of vulnerable populations. She moved to Los Angeles in 2020. Dr. da Hora Pereira has been researching homelessness in Brazil since 2009, she is an expert in qualitative method analysis, such as: interviews, focus groups, life histories and field research techniques, including race and gender analysis.

She has experience in quantitative analysis of population profiles and socioeconomic indicators. Currently, Dr. da Hora Pereira coordinates an interdisciplinary team for three research studies at the Human Rights Centers: 1- evaluation of homeless shelters for adults and families; 2- social distancing and gender violence against women during the pandemic; 3- examine the current public policies implemented by the Executive branch of the Distrito Federal for homeless people.

In the area of homelessness, her research studies were the first initiative that involved the use of consistent techniques of public policy analysis at Human Rights Centers and it was transformed into a permanent program. At the same time, the research results have been used to support government and non-profit organizations to implement public policies for homeless people based on evidence.

The results of the projects about gender and violence against women were used by the Members of the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee on Femicide to support the elaboration of legislative proposals to prevent domestic violence and femicide in Brasilia, Brazil.

Since 2020 she joined the Task Force in Monitoring the Actions to Combat and Prevent the New Coronavirus (COVID-19) to evaluate the public policies implemented by the Governo do Distrito Federal during the pandemic for homeless people.

In 2019 she participated in the team that prepared the Gender, Race and Diversity Equality Policy of the Ministério Público do Distrito Federal e Territórios which included a proposed action to implement the policy.

She worked in health services and shelters for homeless people, including the design of the shelter’s policy, and participated in the government commission that developed public policies for this population in Brasília. During the years 2015 to 2017, she was a professor at Faculdade Evangélica de Brasília and coordinated a Project to Prevent Violations of the Rights of Homeless People.

Specializations:

Gender, race, homelessness and housing, social determinants of health, mental health: alcohol and other drug abuse and trauma, social service, and the violation of human rights of vulnerable populations

Research Strengths:

Research methods and evaluation, including interviews, focus groups, life histories, field research techniques, quantitative analysis of population profile, and socioeconomic indicators

Links to HPRI Research

• MP as an agent for promoting and monitoring public policy to combat violence against women

• Feet on the street: policy for social inclusion of the homeless population in the Federal District

Andy Perry

Program Specialist
Analytics Center of Excellence Team
LA County CEO/CIO

[email protected]

Andy Perry is a member of the Analytics Center of Excellence (ACE) Team at Los Angeles County’s Office of the Chief Information Officer. Andy conducts research and evaluation projects using the OCIO’s Infohub integrated data system to gain a 360-degree view of the County’s residents and to help improve service delivery and outcomes across departments. Prior to coming to the County, Andy contributed to and ran data programs at nonprofit organizations including CSH, Enroll America, and VPIRG, as well as several successful electoral campaigns. An expert at translating back and forth between “data-speak” and “program-speak,” Andy has used data and analytics to improve program design and implementation in order to find and enroll uninsured consumers in California, guide a statewide summer door canvas to support labeling GMOs in Vermont, and better understand and meet the needs of people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles. Andy holds a bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College, a master’s degree from Brown University, and a preliminary teaching certificate from the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society.

Specializations:

Data integration and data policy, homelessness, anti-racist policy

Research Strengths:

Targeting, operationalizing predictive analytics, data-driven program design and management

Robin Petering

Founder + Senior Researcher
Lens Co. 

[email protected]

Dr. Petering is a community-based researcher at Lens Co, a research and advocacy consulting enterprise. Dr. Petering currently oversees several evaluation contracts with agencies across the country that serve young people experiencing homelessness. Dr. Petering’s approach to research and evaluation is to prioritize inclusiveness and equity for all individuals and agencies involved in any given project. Dr. Petering is regarded as one of the leading experts in the field of research on young adults experiencing homelessness informed by her personal experience as a front-line worker and volunteer in agencies that serve this population.

Specializations:

The impact of homelessness experienced by young people.

Dr. Petering has strengths in quantitative, social network, and community-engaged research methods. 

David Phillips

Research Associate Professor
Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities at the University of Notre Dame

[email protected]

David Phillips, Ph.D., works in the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO) within the Department of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses on poverty, particularly as it relates to low-wage labor markets, crime, and housing. His research has been published in high quality economics field journals and presented widely for policy audiences. Prior to coming to Notre Dame, David received a Bachelor’s degree from Butler University, earned a PhD in Economics from Georgetown University, and worked for 4 years at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.

Specializations:

Poverty, housing, transportation, crime, homelessness prevention, rapid re-housing

Quantitative impact evaluation, randomized control trials, quasi-experimental studies

Links to HPRI Research

• Reducing and Preventing Homelessness: A Review of the Evidence and Charting a Research Agenda

• Does emergency financial assistance reduce crime?

Eric Rice

Co-Director; Associate Professor
USC Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society; USC Dworak-Peck School of Social Work

[email protected]

Eric Rice is an associate professor and the founding co-director of the USC Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society, a joint venture of the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

Rice received a BA from the University of Chicago, and an MA and PhD in Sociology from Stanford University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles. He joined the USC faculty in 2009. In 2012 he received the John B. Reid Early Career Award through the Society for Prevention Research.

He specializes in social network science and theory, as well as community-based research. His primary focus is on youth experiencing homelessness and how issues of social network influence may affect risk-taking behaviors and resilience. For several years he has been working with colleague Milind Tambe to merge social work science and AI, seeking novel solutions to major social problems such as homelessness and HIV.

Rice is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed articles in such publications as the American Journal of Public Health, AIDS and Behavior, the Journal of Adolescent Health, Pediatrics, Child Development, and the Journal of the Society for Social Work Research. He is the recipient of grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the California HIV/AIDS Research Program, the Army Research Office and other agencies.

Since 2002 he has worked closely with homeless youth providers in Los Angeles and many other communities across the country to develop novel solutions to end youth homelessness and to support young people who experience homelessness. He is the creator of the TAY Triage Tool—to identify high-risk homeless youth for prioritizing them for supportive housing—which was incorporated into Orgcode’s Next Step Tool for homeless youth. Along with Robin Petering, Rice is the co-chair of the West Coast Convening, a policy and practice working group of homeless youth providers, advocates, researchers and funders. With Megan Blondin, he created the Coordinated Entry Learning Collaborative, a national project involving nine communities working to vet best practices for the creation and implementation of coordinated housing referral systems. Rice’s primary collaborators in Los Angeles are the LGBT Center, My Friend’s Place and Safe Place for Youth.

Specializations:

Social work, Youth homelessness, HIV Prevention, Community-based research

Enter here!Econometrics, Social network analysis, Network science

Links to HPRI Research

• Gender Differences in the Path from Sexual Victimization to HIV Risk Behavior among Homeless Youth

• Los Angeles Housing Models and Neighborhoods’ Role in Supportive Housing Residents’ Social Integration

• Road Map to a Unified Measure of Housing Insecurity

• An examination of housing interventions among youth experiencing homelessness: an investigation into racial/ethnic and sexual minority status

• Exploring the Association of Community Integration in Mental Health among Formerly Homeless Individuals Living in Permanent Supportive Housing

Molly Richard

PHD Candidate
Community Research and Action at Vanderbilt University
[email protected]

Molly Richard (she/they) is a PhD candidate in Community Research and Action at Vanderbilt University. Molly’s research focuses on addressing racial inequities in homelessness, including quantitative research on the structural factors that drive disparities and qualitative research on community response. She also studies the implications of using different definitions of homelessness, including those doubling up. Prior to graduate school, Molly was a member of the research team at C4 innovations, where she served as Assistant Project Director for the SPARC initiative. They continue to support racial equity research and action projects in the homelessness field through collaboration with Racial Equity Partners.

Charles Robbins

Principal
Health Management Associates

[email protected]

With nearly three decades of executive leadership in the nonprofit sector, Charles’ passion is focused on supporting government entities and community-based organizations in achieving greater results through assessment, alignment, and the implementation of innovative solutions.

Charles’ career spans healthcare, child welfare, probation, housing and homelessness, mental health, suicide prevention, harm reduction, and substance use disorder, with a forte in HIV and LGBT populations. He is astute in project management, fund development, needs and organizational assessment, strategic planning, evaluation, accreditation, marketing, government relations, and coalition building, uniting people and processes around shared values, common goals, and evidence-based solutions to achieve lasting results.

Charles joined HMA Community Strategies (HMACS) from APLA Health, a federally qualified health center (FQHC) providing healthcare and social services to the HIV, LGBTQ+, and low-income populations in Los Angeles. As the chief advancement officer, Charles led grant efforts to become Patient Center Medical Home (PCMH) certified. Prior, as vice president at The Village Family Services, a child welfare and behavioral health agency, Charles was instrumental in the planning, development, execution, and evaluation of programs for vulnerable and at-risk transition age youth (TAY). As chief executive officer of The Trevor Project, a national suicide prevention lifeline for LGBTQ+ youth, Charles established an annual strategic plan and program evaluation process which identified gaps in services and resulted in the launch of online crisis services. Under Charles’ tenure, the organization achieved national accreditation from the American Association of Suicidology. Charles’ early career work included movement building at the National LGBT Task Force, advocacy at GLAAD, and the founding of Project Angel Heart, a home delivered meal program in Denver.

Charles serves as a Los Angeles county commissioner for the Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect, volunteers as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), and is a board member of the LGBTQ+ Center of the Desert in Palm Springs. Charles holds an MBA in healthcare management from Western Governors University and a certificate in nonprofit administration from the University of Colorado, Denver.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Housing, Child Welfare, Healthcare, Substance Use Disorder, Harm Reduction, Mental Health, Probation, Suicide Prevention, HIV Prevention, LGBT Population

Implementation and evaluation of multi-sector collective action framework, stakeholder engagement, focus group facilitation, conducting key stakeholder interviews, designing and deploying surveys, and data collection

Links to HPRI Research

• Child Care Needs of Families Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County

Debra Rog

Vice President for Social Policy and Economics Research
Westat

[email protected]

Dr. Debra Rog, a Westat Vice President and President of its nonprofit affiliate, the Rockville Institute, has over 30 years of experience in research and evaluation involving homelessness. Her current work in homelessness includes serving as the principal investigator of several studies, including an evaluation of a ten year systems initiative in three counties in Washington State for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and an evaluation of HUD’s multisite Youth Homelessness Demonstration Initiative. She recently completed two process evaluations of rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing in Los Angeles, a multisite evaluation of supportive housing for families in Washington State, and an examination of the trends in family homelessness in Massachusetts. Prior to joining Westat in 2007, Dr. Rog directed the Washington office of Vanderbilt University’s Center for Evaluation and Program Improvement (CEPI) for 17 years, where she led numerous national multisite evaluations of interventions and systems for homeless and vulnerable populations. Dr. Rog is a well-known and respected methodologist, specializing in mixed methods evaluation, evaluability assessment, and multi-site evaluation. She served as a co-editor of the Sage Publication Series on Applied Social Research Methods, and the Handbook for Social Research Methods. She has published extensively on homelessness, housing, and evaluation methodology. Dr. Rog currently serves on the Research Council of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, is Associate Director and a faculty member of The Evaluators’ Institute, and was the 2009 president of the American Evaluation Association. She has been recognized for her evaluation work by the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Evaluation Association, the Eastern Evaluation Research Society, and the Knowledge Utilization Society. Between 1987 and 1989, she was Associate Director of the Office of Programs for the Homeless Mentally Ill, National Institute of Mental Health.

Links to HPRI Research

• Evaluation of the Family Homelessness Systems Initiative: Examining the Effects of Systems Reform on 18-Month Housing Stability and Related Outcomes

Janey Rountree

Executive Director
California Policy Lab at UCLA

[email protected]

Janey Rountree is the founding Executive Director of the California Policy Lab at UCLA. Prior to joining CPL, she was the Deputy Chief of Staff to Mayor Rahm Emanuel and was responsible for developing and implementing the long-term strategic plan for evidence-based public safety policy, police reform, and violence prevention in Chicago. In addition to direct oversight of the Chicago Police Department, Fire Department and Office of Emergency Management, Janey worked on policy issues that touch on violence prevention but fall outside the traditional scope of public safety, including workforce development, homelessness, education, school climate, youth employment, mentoring, and mental health. During her tenure in Chicago, Janey helped to promote evidence-based policy by working closely with researchers to evaluate publicly funded programs and to scale up the ones that were proven effective. Prior to working in the Chicago Mayor’s Office, she was the Firearms Policy Coordinator senior counsel for New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg. She has practiced law, taught high school, and worked in the non-profit sector. She holds a B.A. from Williams College and a J.D./LL.M from Duke Law School.

Specializations:

Public policy, Public safety, Constitutional policing, Violence prevention, Education, Emergency management, Homelessness

Links to HPRI Research

• Serious Mental Illness among People who are Unsheltered in Los Angeles

• Inequity in the Permanent Supportive Housing System in Los Angeles: Scale, Scope and Reasons for Black Residents’ Returns to Homelessness

• Preventing Homelessness: Evidence-Based Methods to Screen Adults and Families at Risk of Homelessness in Los Angeles

• Fact Sheet: What Research Says About Homeless Prevention Policy Programs

• Predicting and Preventing Homelessness in Los Angeles

Molly Rysman

Chief Program Officer
Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority

[email protected]

As the Chief Program Officer of LAHSA, Molly Rysman works to create systems change and public policy that support solutions to homelessness and expand the supply of affordable housing throughout Los Angeles County. Prior to joining LAHSA, Ms. Rysman served as the Los Angeles Director for CSH, a community development finance institution dedicated to expanding housing solutions to reduce homelessness. As the Director for CSH’s Los Angeles office, Ms. Rysman oversaw all of CSH’s training, lending, technical assistance, and systems change work throughout Los Angeles County. Ms. Rysman also served as the External Affairs Director for the Skid Row Housing Trust, one of the largest permanent supportive housing developers in Los Angeles. She collaborated on efforts to serve the most vulnerable individuals experiencing chronic homelessness in Skid Row, including Project 50, the Skid Row Collaborative, and Downtown Pathway Home. Ms. Rysman has also been a stouthearted advocate for underserved communities in Los Angeles, including serving as a Legislative Deputy for Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti, working for the Liberty Hill Foundation, and serving survivors of domestic violence at Haven Hills. Molly earned a Master’s degree in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles, and is a proud alumnus of California State University Los Angeles, where she earned her bachelor’s degree.

JuHyun Sakota

Principal
People’s Health Solutions

[email protected]

JuHyun Sakota, MPA, is Principal of People’s Health Solutions (PHS), a consulting team whose mission is to help build healthy and sustainable communities. In this role, she is helping health systems, homeless service providers, foundations, and policy and advocacy organizations have a greater impact through program planning and evaluation, needs assessment and asset mapping, and data visualization and storytelling.

She is an experienced researcher and data visualization designer in area of social justice, with more than a decade of experience in social policy research and quantitative/spatial (GIS) analysis to help data-driven decision-making in public, philanthropic, and nonprofit sectors. Previously she served as Interim Director of Data Integration and Manager of Data and Research at Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA). She oversaw the methodology design, analysis, and compliance sides of the Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count and provided analysis support for policy decisions at the City and County levels. She holds proven ability to train 500+ individuals on how to leverage data and mapping technology to lift up community voices and influence policy. She has analyzed geographic patterns of California’s three major foundations’ investments of $230M per year to prioritize funding for communities in need.

JuHyun holds a Master of Public Affairs from The University of Texas at Austin. Her academic work focuses on urban and regional housing policies in geographic contexts. She is a member of American Evaluation Association. She is passionate about communicating complex information in a beautiful and friendly format. Some of her work samples can be found at: juhyunsakota.com/portfolio

Specializations:

Housing and homelessness, community safety, racial and gender equity, and healthcare.

Links to HPRI Research

• Los Angeles City and County Health Service Coordination for People Experiencing Homelessness Rapid Response Landscape Analysis

• Responding to Intimate Partner Violence and Homelessness in Los Angeles County during a Time of COVID-19

• Separate yet Connected: Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence and Homelessness in Los Angeles County during COVID-19

• Responding to Intimate Partner Violence and Homelessness in Los Angeles County during a Time of COVID-19

• Responding to Intimate Partner Violence and Homelessness in Los Angeles County during a Time of COVID-19

Robert Santillano

Research Director 
California Policy Lab, UCLA

[email protected]

Robert is a policy scholar with a passion to improve social services using actionable research. He holds a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in Mathematics from Pomona College.

While his research interests broadly include any area involving low-income families, he has done most of his topical research on employment-training services, choice in public education, and the impact of restrictive immigration policies. He is especially interested in researching how performance measurement systems and incentives for service providers can be used to encourage continuous improvement with service provision. His research has been published in the Journal of Human Resources, Evaluation Review, Industrial Relations, among others.

Specializations:

Education, homelessness, labor 

Research Strengths:

Causal inference 

Links to HPRI Research

• Serious Mental Illness among People who are Unsheltered in Los Angeles

Amy Shearer

Associate Behavioral/Social Scientist
RAND Corporation

Amy Shearer is an Associate Behavioral/Social Scientist at RAND Corporation. Her research interests are at the intersection of mental health, housing, and community predictors of health-related attitudes and behaviors. Her graduate work explored community perceptions of psychiatric supportive housing (NIMBYism), and has helped inform housing developments in Oregon. Other research has investigated neighborhood-level predictors of residential satisfaction for individuals living in permanent supportive housing. She is experienced in interviewing and conducting focus groups with adults with serious mental illness engaged in housing and support services, and has led an evaluation of a wellness program for supportive housing clients.

Her methodological expertise is in process and outcome evaluations for mental health programs. She recently designed outcome measures for county-wide prevention mental health programs, and co-authored a RAND handbook on evaluation approaches for mental health prevention and early intervention programs. Her recent work is focused on improving the capacity of organizations to implement and evaluate community violence prevention and resilience promotion programs using RAND’s Getting To Outcomes framework. Amy received her PhD in Applied Social and Community Psychology from Portland State University, and her BA in Psychology from the University of California, Davis.

Specializations:

Mental health, Community health indicators, Permanent supportive housing, Psychiatric housing, Homelessness, NIMBYism, Health outcomes research

Place-based research, Program evaluation, Focus group methods, Survey methods, Quantitative analysis, Qualitative analysis

Mark Silverbush

Associate
Abt Associates

[email protected]

Mark Silverbush is an Associate with Abt Associates. Mark is the technical assistance lead to the Los Angeles Continuum of care on data issues on behalf of HUD and has over ten years of experience in the homelessness sector providing project management, planning, research, data analysis, and technical assistance support to communities. Nationally, Mark is known for his expertise on system modeling, data dashboards, homeless counts, HMIS, and as the lead author of VA’s Supportive Services for Veterans Families annual report.

At the City University of New York’s Baruch College, Mark earned a Master’s Degree in Public Administration. He has lived in Los Angeles for the past 11 years and is a volunteer co-chair of the South Bay Coalition to End Homelessness.

Specializations:

Chronic and Veteran Homelessness, Training, Program Management, Strategic Partnerships, Community Outreach, Government, Non-profits

Data Dashboards, Geographic Information Systems, Homeless System Modeling, Program Design & Evaluation, Data Collection Systems, Quantitative Analysis

Links to HPRI Research

• The 2018 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress Part 1: Point-in-Time Estimates of Homelessness

• The 2017 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress Part 2: Estimates of Homelessness in the United States

• The 2017 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress Part 1: Point-in-Time Estimates of Homelessness

• The 2015 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress Part 2: Estimates of Homelessness in the United States

• The 2015 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress Part 1: Point-in-Time Estimates of Homelessness

James Sullivan

Co-Founder; Professor
Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities; University of Notre Dame, Department of Economics

[email protected]

James Sullivan is a Professor of Economics and Gilbert F. Schaefer College Chair at the University of Notre Dame. He has been a visiting scholar at the National Poverty Center and a visiting professor at the University of Chicago. He was recently appointed to the U.S. Commission on Social Impact Partnerships and he serves on the National Poverty Center Advisory Board. His research examines the effectiveness of anti-poverty programs at the national, state, and local level. He also studies the consumption, saving, and borrowing behavior of poor households, as well as poverty and inequality measurement. Sullivan has published numerous journal articles and book chapters, many of which appear in the top economics journals. His work has been covered by major media outlets including CNN, the Washington Post, Forbes, Fox News, Barron’s, Bloomberg News, Slate, the Atlantic Monthly, the Wall St. Journal, the Chicago Tribune, National Public Radio, and others. In 2015 he testified at a hearing on evidence-based policy for the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2012, with fellow Notre Dame Professor William Evans, Professor Sullivan founded the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO). LEO is a research center that works with service providers and policymakers to identify effective and scalable solutions to reduce poverty in America. Sullivan received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame and his Ph.D. from Northwestern University.

Specializations:

Borrowing behavior of poor households, consumption, inequality, poverty, saving, welfare, tax policy

Randomized control trials, quasi-experimental evaluations of domestic anti-poverty programs

Patricia St. Clair

Director of Data Core
USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics

[email protected]

Patricia St. Clair is director of the Data Core at the USC Schaeffer Center. The Data Core provides support for the center’s analytic computing and data resources that are key to its research. The Data Core team includes research programmers, a statistician and an information scientist who provide technical help and training to center students, postdocs, staff, faculty and collaborators; directly support specific research projects; and manage the center’s data infrastructure.

St. Clair has experience with a wide variety of data used in research including longitudinal surveys, Census data and claims data. Prior to joining the Schaeffer Center, she supported research projects on health, education and aging at RAND for nearly 20 years. She earned her ScB in Computer Science from Brown University and has studied neurobehavioral genetics, focusing on circadian rhythms and sleep, in the Inter-departmental Program in Neuroscience at UCLA.

Specializations:

Education, Health, Neurobehavioral Genetics, Homelessness

Census Data, Longitudinal Surveys, Data Infrastructure

Links to HPRI Research

• 2022 Los Angeles Homeless Count: Understanding the Estimates from the Annual Point-in-Time (PIT) Count

Max Stevens

Director of Research and Evaluation
Los Angeles County Chief Executive Office

[email protected]

Max Stevens earned a Ph.D. in Sociology at UCLA in 2000, with a specializations in Political Economy, Poverty and Inequality in the United States, and Economic Development and Under Development. He became a Los Angeles County employee in 2001 when he was hired as an analyst for purposes of examining the impact of welfare reform on families and children in the United States. In 2005, Dr. Stevens expanded his research into areas such as homelessness, justice reform, and the long-term impacts of involvement in the Foster Care and Juvenile Justice systems. In 2013, he officially became the director of the Chief Executive Office’s Research and Evaluation Services unit and continues to hold that position today.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Justice systems and Justice reform, Poverty and welfare policy, Fiscal analysis and forecasting, Foster Care and Juvenile Justice, Legislative Analysis

Statistics and quantitative modeling; Participant Observation; Cost avoidance, cost savings and return on investment analyses; Focus Groups

Links to HPRI Research

• Los Angeles County’s Enterprise Linkages Project: An Example of the Use of Integrated Data Systems in Making Data-Driven Policy and Program Decisions

• Project 50: The Cost Effectiveness of the Permanent Supportive Housing Model in the Skid Row Section of Los Angeles County

Emmy Tiderington

Assistant Professor
Rutgers University School of Social Work

[email protected]

Emmy Tiderington, PhD, MSW, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her research broadly focuses on the implementation and effectiveness of service interventions for individuals experiencing homelessness, as well as the mechanisms and processes by which formerly homeless adults achieve recovery from substance abuse and serious mental illness. In various projects, she has examined the individual, organizational, and macro-systemic barriers to “street-level” policy implementation of person-centered care, harm reduction, and the management of risk and recovery in supportive housing. Currently, she is conducting a three-year study of the implementation and outcomes of Moving On initiatives, a model that utilizes rental subsidies and transitional supports to assist individuals and families with the move from supportive housing to mainstream housing independent of wrap-around support services. This project is part of a larger body of work focused on improving transitional processes in homeless services. Prior to her appointment at Rutgers, she worked as a clinical supervisor, social worker, and direct care provider in housing and case management programs for individuals with serious mental illness and other complex needs. Dr. Tiderington is the recipient of the Robert Moore Award for Excellence in Scholarship from New York University, an Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation of the Year Honorable Mention from the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR), and a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Mental Health.

Specializations:

Homelessness, mental health and substance abuse recovery, homeless services research

Qualitative and mixed methods

Halil Toros

Statistical Analytics Consultant
Economic Roundtable

[email protected]

Halil has collaborated with the Economic Roundtable for over 10 years, principally involved in homeless cost avoidance and studies with data linkages. He is a Senior Analytical Consultant at the SAS Institute. In the past, he taught Econometrics, Statistics and Program Evaluation while an Adjunct Professor at USC. He also formerly worked for the Los Angeles County Chief Executive Office, Services Integration Branch on program evaluation projects, and holds Ph.D. in Political Economy & Public Policy from USC.

Specializations:

Homelessness, public policy, cost avoidance

Econometrics, Program evaluation

Links to HPRI Research

• Escape Routes: Meta-Analysis of Los Angeles County

• Prioritizing Homeless Assistance Using Predictive Algorithms: An Evidence-Based Approach

• Early Intervention to Prevent Persistent Homelessness: Predictive Models for Identifying Unemployed Workers and Young Adults who become Persistently Homeless

• Los Angeles County’s Enterprise Linkages Project: An Example of the Use of Integrated Data Systems in Making Data-Driven Policy and Program Decisions

• Project 50: The Cost Effectiveness of the Permanent Supportive Housing Model in the Skid Row Section of Los Angeles County

Marc Tousignant

Senior Program Director
Enterprise Community Partners

[email protected]

Marc directs Enterprise’s local work on homelessness and supportive housing. He is currently managing a permanent supportive housing preservation initiative and systems change efforts to strengthen the permanent housing component of the Coordinated Entry System. He joined Enterprise in 2007, when he was responsible for managing technical assistance assignments contracted through the HUD Los Angeles Field office, which included the federal HOME and Continuum of Care programs.

Prior to Enterprise, he served as Senior Program Manager at Shelter Partnership, Inc., serving as the lead technical assistance provider for the Los Angeles HOPWA program, in addition to managing other strategic and systems planning efforts during that time relative to special needs housing initiatives in Los Angeles County. Marc started in the housing and community development field as an AmeriCorps intern at Resources for Community Development, an affordable housing development organization in Berkeley, CA. He holds a B.A. in History from the University of Michigan.

Specializations:

Permanent supportive housing, homelessness policy, and resident services

Jack Tsai

Campus Dean and Professor of Public Health
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth)

[email protected]

Jack Tsai, Ph.D. is the San Antonio Campus Dean and Professor of Public Health at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. He also serves as Research Director for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans. Dr. Tsai formerly served as faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine for a decade and has an adjunct appointment there now. Dr. Tsai has received federally funded grants and published nearly 200 peer-reviewed articles on topics related to homelessness, severe mental illness, trauma, and health disparities. He has served as a grant reviewer for the VA, PCORI, Social Security Administration, and several foundations. He holds leadership positions in the American Psychological Association and the American Public Health Association, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Social Distress and Homelessness.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Severe Mental Illness, Trauma, Health Disparities

Multivariable Analyses; Mixed Linear Models; Factor Analysis; Latent Class Analysis; Grounded theory qualitative methods

Links to HPRI Research

• Racial Differences in the Psychosocial Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Veterans With Psychosis or Recent Homelessness

• Socioeconomic challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic for Veterans with psychosis or recent homelessness

• The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health and functional outcomes in Veterans with psychosis or recent homelessness: A 15-month longitudinal study

• Changes in Physical Health After Supported Housing: Results from the Collaborative Initiative to End Chronic Homelessness

• Housing Instability and Homeless Program Use Among Veterans: The Intersection of Race, Sex, and Homelessness

Alex Visotzky

Senior California Policy Fellow
National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH)

Alex Visotzky is the Senior California Policy Fellow for the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH), where he works to ground California’s response to homelessness in best practices and evidenced-based solutions. Prior to joining NAEH, Alex worked for five years in local government, where he served most recently as the Director of Government Affairs for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), the lead administrative entity for the Los Angeles Continuum of Care (LA CoC). There, he directed LAHSA’s legislative, policy, and community engagement work. Prior to joining LAHSA, Alex worked for Neighborhood Housing Services of Los Angeles County, where he advocated for local and state policies to advance equitable land use, affordable housing, and affordable homeownership. He has a BA from Oberlin College and an MPP from the Price School of Public Policy at the University Southern California.

Links to HPRI Research

• Increasing Latino Homelessness—What’s Happening, Why, and What to Do About It

Till Von Wachter

Faculty Director; Professor; Director
California Policy Lab at UCLA; UCLA Department of Economics; Federal Statistical Research Center

[email protected]

Till von Wachter is Professor of Economics at the University of California Los Angeles, Faculty Director of the California Policy Lab, Director of the Federal Statistical Research Data Center, and Associate Dean for Research for the Social Science Division. Prof. von Wachter’s research examines how labor market conditions and institutions affect the wellbeing of workers and their families. This includes the analysis of unemployment and job loss on workers long-term outcomes, as well as the role of unemployment insurance and disability insurance in buffering such shocks.

Current research projects focus on job and earnings mobility of young workers over their careers, as well as the several projects on homelessness using administrative data from Los Angeles. Professor von Wachter’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute for Aging, the Social Security Administration, the Sloan Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. Prof. von Wachter has been expert witness in numerous testimonies before congressional committees, and has provided expert assistance to the U.S. Department of Labor, the Canadian Labor Ministry, the OECD, the United Nations, and the IMF.

Specializations:

Labor & Employment, Aging, Macroeconomics, Homelessness, Applied Microeconomics

Econometrics, Administrative Data, Data Infrastructure

Links to HPRI Research

• Preventing Homelessness: Evidence-Based Methods to Screen Adults and Families at Risk of Homelessness in Los Angeles

• Predicting and Preventing Homelessness in Los Angeles

• Employment and Earnings Among LA County Residents Experiencing Homelessness

Clara Wagner

Senior Study Director: Social Policy and Economics
Westat

[email protected]

Clara Wagner, PhD is Senior Study Director in the Social Policy and Economics Research Area at Westat, where she designs and implements mixed methods evaluations of programs and initiatives to address the housing, health, and social service needs of vulnerable populations. She recently directed two mixed-methods evaluations of the implementation and outcomes of Los Angeles County’s strategies to expand and enhance services provided through rapid re-housing and permanent supportive housing. Currently, Dr. Wagner serves as the lead analyst for a longitudinal evaluation of the homeless families’ service delivery systems in three counties in Washington State and acts as a site lead for a multi-site evaluation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Youth Homelessness Demonstration Project and an evaluation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health Initiative. She brings to this work 15 years of experience in research and evaluation design and implementation, including the collection and analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data (including longitudinal and large administrative datasets), as well as in-depth knowledge on homeless service delivery systems, social determinants of health, mental health services, behavioral health care access, and trauma-informed practices. Prior to joining Westat in 2016, Dr. Wagner completed a postdoctoral fellowship in health services research from the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion at the Crescenz VA Medical Center in Philadelphia, where she examined access to and engagement in behavioral health care among veterans and the health care needs of women veterans experiencing intimate partner violence. Dr. Wagner received a BA in psychology from McGill University, and a PhD in Developmental Psychology from Temple University, where her doctoral research focused on the emergence of mood disorders in adolescence and young adulthood.

Specializations:

Program, policies, and systems initiatives to meet the needs of vulnerable and underserved populations, homelessness and housing, social determinants of health, mental Health.

Expertise in the use of mixed methods research and evaluation, including: study design; the development of data collection instruments; collection and analysis of qualitative focus group and interview data; and quantitative data analysis, including analysis of longitudinal and large administrative datasets using a range of multivariate analytic techniques, such as time series analysis, cluster analysis, survival analysis, and nested models. 

Links to HPRI Research

• Evaluation of the Family Homelessness Systems Initiative: Examining the Effects of Systems Reform on 18-Month Housing Stability and Related Outcomes

Suzanne Wagner

Principal and Founder
Housing Innovations

[email protected]

Suzanne Wagner is a Principal and founder at Housing Innovations (HI), a consulting group that assists organizations to develop and implement effective solutions to homelessness. Suzanne has provided training and consultation to hundreds of nonprofit and public agencies throughout the country to expand their capacity to provide effective services and implement evidence-based practices (EBP’s) that are proven to end homelessness. She has worked with numerous organizations to implement and evaluate Critical Time Intervention (CTI), Housing First, Moving On from Supportive Housing (MOSH) and other EBP’s. She is a member of the Steering Committee for the Center for the Advancement of CTI at the Silberman School of Social Work at CUNY Hunter. Suzanne has over 30 years of experience in the design and delivery of housing programs and services for homeless people, ranging from adolescents and families to single adults with complex needs. She holds a Master Degree in Social Work from Columbia University and a Bachelor Degree from Barnard College.

Specializations:

Homeless single adults, homeless youth, evidence-based housing and service models, coordinated entry systems, program development and evaluation, Housing First, Critical Time Intervention, homeless systems design and planning.

Jason Ward

Associate Economist
RAND Corporation

[email protected]

Jason Ward is an associate economist at the RAND Corporation and a member of the Pardee RAND Graduate School faculty. His work uses the tools of applied microeconomics to study housing, labor markets, education, health, and links between these domains. His research has assessed the effect of four-day school weeks on parental employment, the effect of parental involvement laws on abortions to minors, the effects of performance-based state higher education funding systems on student outcomes, the nature of geographic variation in health care utilization, and the association between education and health over the life course. Current projects include developing tools to measure the gap between the earnings of military service members and their potential earnings in the civilian labor market, assessing changes in veterans labor market and health outcomes over time, estimating the willingness to pay (in home price) for multiple measures of elementary school quality in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and estimating the association between unemployment and substance use/abuse using seasonal variation in employment across occupations and industries.

Specializations:

Children, Families, and Communities; Cost-Effectiveness in Health Care; Demographics; Education Policy; Households; Labor Markets; Veterans Employment

Links to HPRI Research

• Recent Trends Among the Unsheltered in Three Los Angeles Neighborhoods: An Interim Report on the Los Angeles Longitudinal Enumeration and Demographic Survey (LA LEADS) Project

• The Effects of Project Labor Agreements on the Production of Affordable Housing

Christopher Weare

Lecturer
Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley
[email protected]

Christopher Weare has been engaged in policy research for over 25 years. Most recently his research focused on the adoption and use of performance management reforms in public organizations where he completed a 3-year evaluation of Mayor Garcetti’s Back-to-Basics initiative.

During that time, he moved to the non-profit sector to lead the data analytics and research efforts of a Californian Continuum of Care. In that role, he directed the development of a wide array of analyses and reports. This work included the creation of dashboards to communicate the state of homelessness and of efforts to address homelessness to the general public and analytic dashboards designed to inform decision makers on program effectiveness and to quickly identify performance shortfalls in the system.

One major project during his tenure focused on the effectiveness of Rapid Rehousing programs (RRH). In this CoC, the percentage of RRH clients that successfully moved into permanent housing placements decreased dramatically over the last four years. The main source of these difficulties appears to be the increasingly tight housing market which makes it ever more difficult to find landlords interested in accepting RRH vouchers. Nevertheless, the research identified some providers that were able to maintain their levels of success, suggesting that proactive policies can mitigate issues that arise due to the tightening housing market.

Specializations:

• System level analysis of homeless crisis systems based on HMIS data
• Performance management and statistical analysis of program effectiveness
• Program evaluation
• Client segmentation of the homeless population and analysis of client needs

Links to HPRI Research

• Safe Parking: Insights from a Review of National Programs

• Housing Outcomes for Homeless Individuals in Street Outreach Compared to Shelter

• Applying Performance Management Tools to Understand and Improve Rapid Re-Housing Program Outcomes

Suzanne Wenzel

Interim Dean; Richard and Ann Thor Professor in Urban Social Development
USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work

[email protected]

Suzanne Wenzel has devoted much of her career to interdisciplinary research that seeks to understand and address health-related needs of vulnerable populations, particularly individuals experiencing homelessness in urban communities.

Wenzel has served as the principal investigator on nine grants from the National Institutes of Health. Funding for these projects from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has totaled almost $12 million. Her research involving homeless persons has included an investigation of the relationship of trauma to substance use and HIV/AIDS risk among women; examinations of the social context of risk for substance use and HIV/AIDS among women, men and youth; and adaption of evidence-based programs to address post-traumatic stress and to prevent victimization and risky sexual activity among women. She is also investigating the process and outcomes of transitioning to permanent supportive housing for persons experiencing chronic homelessness and organized a Los Angeles County-wide forum on the topic of integrated care and housing for homeless persons. Wenzel has additionally focused her research on substance abuse treatment quality and continuous quality improvement, and organizational linkages among treatment courts for drug-involved offenders and community-based providers of behavioral health services.

After completing her doctoral studies in community psychology, Wenzel was awarded a National Institute of Mental Health post-doctoral fellowship in the Rutgers/Princeton program in mental health research. Prior to her appointment at the USC School of Work in 2009, she was a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., and was responsible for research quality assurance in the RAND Health program.

Wenzel serves as the director of the School of Social Work research cluster on Homelessness, Housing and Social Environment. She is an elected fellow in the Association for Psychological Science and a fellow in the Western Psychological Association. Wenzel is a member of the American Public Health Association, the American Psychological Association, the Society for Community Research and Action, and the Society for Social Work and Research. She has published 80 peer-reviewed journal articles, has performed peer review services for 35 different scholarly journals, and has served on review panels for the National Institutes of Health and other funding agencies. She is also a member of several community advisory boards.

Links to HPRI Research

• Expanding the Understanding of Risk Behavior Associated With Homelessness Among Veterans

• Gender Differences in the Path from Sexual Victimization to HIV Risk Behavior among Homeless Youth

• The Role of Mental Health and Substance Use in Homeless Adults’ Tobacco Use and Cessation Attempts

• Los Angeles Housing Models and Neighborhoods’ Role in Supportive Housing Residents’ Social Integration

• Moving Beyond Housing: Service Implications for Veterans Entering Permanent Supportive Housing

John Wieselthier

PHD Candidate
UC Berkeley

[email protected]

John Wieselthier is a PhD Candidate in Economics at UC Berkeley specializing in Labor and Econometrics. Within Labor, he primarily focuses on crime and homelessness policy. His current work is looking at the fiscal externalities associated with homelessness, as well as estimating changes in benefits and these externalities in response to changes in homelessness status. John holds a BA in Economics and Mathematics from UC Berkeley.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Crime, Legal Financial Obligations, Public Policy, Identification in Networks

Research Strengths:

Econometric methods

Brenda Wiewel

Director
USC Initiative to End Homelessness

[email protected]

Brenda Wiewel, a licensed clinical social worker, joined the University of Southern California’s effort in January 2017 as Director of an Initiative to Eliminate Homelessness. She is responsible for the campus wide effort that engages with the community around solving homelessness in the Los Angeles region. She is focused on reducing homelessness by developing and matching university innovations, tools, and resources in support of government, non-profit, and foundation partners to maximize the local effort’s effectiveness. She has organized high level local leadership convenings, developed curriculum, arranged multiple opportunities for student involvement as part of workforce development, and coordinated university-wide communications efforts to promote understanding. An alumnus of USC, Ms. Wiewel received her master’s degree in Social Work (’80) from the University of Southern California. Her career has focused on building and administering behavioral health treatment and prevention programs in the non-profit sector, with a focus on services for persons experiencing homelessness. She entered a course of study toward a doctorate in social work as of September 2017, where she is focusing on the Grand Challenge of Homelessness and designing new efforts in the area of prevention to stem the inflow onto our streets.

Specializations:

Homelessness and trauma, Homelessness prevention for adult women, Campus homelessness

Links to HPRI Research

• Traumatic Stress and Homelessness: A Review of the Literature for Practitioners