HPRI Partners

Gary Painter

Director; Professor
USC Price Center for Social Innovation; USC Price School of Public Policy

gpainter@usc.edu

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 Sol Price Center for Social Innovation and 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

• What happens to household formation in a recession?

• Housing Formation and Unemployment Rates

Nichole Fiore

Associate
Abt Associates

Nichole_Fiore@abtassoc.com

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

• 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

• Evaluation of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation Chronic Homeless Initiative Phase I Final Report

Joelle Greene

Director
Harder + Company

jgreene@harderco.com

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

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

NMilburn@mednet.ucla.edu

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

• 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

• Adolescents Exiting Homelessness Over Two Years: The Risk Amplification and Abatement Model

Jessica Monge Coria

Senior Program Manager
Corporation for Supportive Housing

jessica.mongecoria@csh.org

Jessica Monge Coria is a results-focused leader and partnership developer with over 14 years of experience in the public sector and a passion for improving outcomes by maximizing resources through systems change. Currently she is a Senior Program Manager at CSH overseeing Los Angeles County’s first Pay for Success transaction. The goal of this project is to stably house and reduce recidivism rates for chronically homeless individuals with mental illness and other co-occurring conditions by placing them in supportive housing immediately upon release from the criminal justice system. Her portfolio also includes working to develop long-term solutions for unstably housed youth and families involved in the child welfare system.

Before joining CSH, Jessica was a manager in the Strategic Partnerships Department at First 5 LA, working with Los Angeles funders and early care and education organizations to develop programs and coalitions to help young children and their families thrive. She was also in the Research and Evaluation sector, where she worked 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

Michael Nailat

Program Officer
United Way of Greater Los Angeles

mnailat@unitedwayla.org

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

Janey Rountree

Executive Director
California Policy Lab at UCLA

janey@cpl.ucla.edu

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

• Health Conditions Among Unsheltered Adults in the U.S.

Suzanne L. Wenzel

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

swenzel@usc.edu

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

• Do HIV risk and prevention behaviors change over time among adults in permanent supportive housing?

• Social networks and substance use after transitioning into permanent supportive housing

• A Grounded Theory of the Relationship Between Ontological Security, Mental Health, Social Relationships, and Identity Formation for Young Adults in Supportive Housing

• Longitudinal effects of permanent supportive housing on insomnia for homeless adults

• A pilot of a tripartite prevention program for homeless young women in the transition to adulthood

Va Lecia Adams Kellum

President & CEO
St. Joseph Center

vadams@stjosephctr.org

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

Melissa Chinchilla

Research Scientist
AltaMed

mechinchilla@altamed.org

Before joining AltaMed as a Research Scientist, Melissa Chinchilla was a Post Doctoral Fellow in Health Services Research and Development at the Veteran Administration of Greater Los Angeles and a Master of Science candidate in Health Policy Management at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health.

Dr. Chinchilla’s research rests at the intersection of housing, health, and community development. Her dissertation examined the community integration outcomes of formerly homeless individuals assisted through the VA’s largest homeless program, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-VA Supportive Housing (VASH). Dr. Chinchilla’s research on HUD-VASH points to the importance of voucher type and neighborhood factors in assuring that formerly homeless individuals in supportive housing are able to achieve housing stability and improvements in quality of life. Dr. Chinchilla’s current research examines Latino homelessness in Los Angeles County, including what is driving the increase in Latino homelessness, gaps in housing and service provision, and best practices for serving this population. Dr. Chinchilla has also published on the use of Health Impact Assessment as an interdisciplinary teaching tool, and continues to examine ways to bridge the divide between public health and urban planning disciplines.

Dr. Chinchilla’s work has been published by MIT Press and the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. She has received research funding from the Pricilla King Gray Public Service Center, Sagalyn and Hack Dissertation Grant, and the Veteran Administration Research Enhancement Award Program.

Dr. Chinchilla earned her doctorate in Urban Studies and Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also holds a master in City and Regional Planning and bachelor degrees in Social Welfare and Mass Communications from the University of California, Berkeley.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Affordable Housing, Social Determinants of Health

Links to HPRI Research

• Stemming the Rise of Latino Homelessness: Lessons from Los Angeles County

Robynn Cox

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

robynnco@usc.edu

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

• Roadmap to a Unified Measure of Housing Insecurity

Rashida Crutchfield

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

rashida.crutchfield@csulb.edu

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

• 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

eedwards02@ucla.edu

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

Cheryl Grills

Director
Loyola Marymount University Psychology Applied Research Center

cheryl.grills@lmu.edu

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 PARC@LMU 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

Michael Lens

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

mlens@ucla.edu

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

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

NMilburn@mednet.ucla.edu

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

• 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

• Adolescents Exiting Homelessness Over Two Years: The Risk Amplification and Abatement Model

Angelique Montgomery

Program Coordinator
Home for Good Team, United Way
amontgomery@unitedwayla.org

Angelique Montgomery is the Program Coordinator with the Home For Good Team at the United Way, focusing on data and research initiatives. She is the project lead of the HACademy, an organized group of regional data coordinators who work to improve data quality and data capacity for all SPA regions to help better understand homelessness. In addition, she works closely with the policy team on the Home For Good Team in establishing best data practices for the A Bridge Home initiative.

Prior to being at United Way, Angelique was a recent graduate from the Master of Social Work program with a concentration in Non-Profit Management and Business Innovation. She spent 3 years working for the Integrated Substance Abuse Treatment to End Disparities Research Team at USC that aimed to increase program capacity and evaluation for outpatient substance abuse programs in Los Angeles County. In her spare time, she is a program evaluation consultant for substance abuse treatment and wellness programs that focus on serving racial and ethnic minorities in Los Angeles County.

Saba Mwine

Senior Program Manager
Corporation for Supportive Housing

saba.mwine@csh.org

Saba Mwine has over 16 years of experience spearheading projects throughout the nation to measure, investigate and enforce equal access to housing. She has played multiple roles from project designer and civil rights investigator to management consultant and race equity educator. In addition to her civil rights work, Saba is a professional actor, committed to weaving the universal language of art performance in all settings. Since her start with CSH in 2017, she secured foundation funding for and designed CSH’s first racial equity programming, external trainings and community initiatives—inclusive of qualitative research. In addition to liaising with national and local partners on race equity, Saba employs multimodal interactive approaches in directing CSH’s Los Angeles Supportive Housing Institute—a provider intensive to enable quality supportive housing throughout LA County.

Prior to CSH, Saba worked with the Urban Institute and the Housing Rights Center to train and direct field researchers for the federal Housing Discrimination Study (HDS) 2012 in Los Angeles County and later worked as management consultant to multiple HDS major cities across the country. Subsequently, she conducted the HDS Disabilities in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and consulted again with the Urban Institute for the project design and implementation of the pilot study HDS Lesbian, Gay, Transgender. Additionally, at the Housing Rights Center, Saba worked as lead investigator for the Fair Housing Initiatives Program—Regional in 6 SoCal cities. Saba began her work in race equity as a fair housing tester and subsequent manager for the LA based, women owned firm Progressive Management Resources. She is also a qualified theatre professor and talented adult educator. Saba holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Performance from California State University, Long Beach and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Wheaton College in Massachusetts.

Specializations:

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

Michael Nailat

Program Officer
United Way of Greater Los Angeles

mnailat@unitedwayla.org

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 Price Center for Social Innovation; USC Price School of Public Policy

gpainter@usc.edu

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 Sol Price Center for Social Innovation and 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

• What happens to household formation in a recession?

• Housing Formation and Unemployment Rates

Manuel Pastor

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

mpastor@college.usc.edu

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

Eric Rice

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

ericr@usc.edu

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

• Do HIV risk and prevention behaviors change over time among adults in permanent supportive housing?

• Social networks and substance use after transitioning into permanent supportive housing

• A Grounded Theory of the Relationship Between Ontological Security, Mental Health, Social Relationships, and Identity Formation for Young Adults in Supportive Housing

• Investigating Health Risk Environments in Housing Programs for Young Adults

• Homeless but Connected: The Role of Heterogeneous Social Network Ties and Social Networking Technology in the Mental Health Outcomes of Street-Living Youth

Janey Rountree

Executive Director
California Policy Lab at UCLA

janey@cpl.ucla.edu

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

• Health Conditions Among Unsheltered Adults in the U.S.

Lourdes Johanna Avelar Portillo

Doctoral Candidate
USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts & Sciences
 avelarpo@usc.edu

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)

mberkson@lahsa.org

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.

Gretchen Brickson

Associate Director, Los Angeles Program
Corporation for Supportive Housing

gretchen.brickson@csh.org

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

Moshe Buchinsky

Professor
UCLA Department of Economics

buchinsky@econ.ucla.edu

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

patrickburns@economicrt.org

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

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

Links to HPRI Research

• All Alone: Antecedents of Chronic Homelessness

• Escape Routes: Meta-Analysis of Homelessness in L.A.

• Assessing Accuracy of L.A.’s Homeless Count

• Where We Sleep: Costs when Homeless and Housed in Los Angeles

• Crisis Indicator: Triage Tool for Identifying Homeless Adults in Crisis

Melissa Chinchilla

Research Scientist
AltaMed

mechinchilla@altamed.org

Before joining AltaMed as a Research Scientist, Melissa Chinchilla was a Post Doctoral Fellow in Health Services Research and Development at the Veteran Administration of Greater Los Angeles and a Master of Science candidate in Health Policy Management at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health.

Dr. Chinchilla’s research rests at the intersection of housing, health, and community development. Her dissertation examined the community integration outcomes of formerly homeless individuals assisted through the VA’s largest homeless program, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-VA Supportive Housing (VASH). Dr. Chinchilla’s research on HUD-VASH points to the importance of voucher type and neighborhood factors in assuring that formerly homeless individuals in supportive housing are able to achieve housing stability and improvements in quality of life. Dr. Chinchilla’s current research examines Latino homelessness in Los Angeles County, including what is driving the increase in Latino homelessness, gaps in housing and service provision, and best practices for serving this population. Dr. Chinchilla has also published on the use of Health Impact Assessment as an interdisciplinary teaching tool, and continues to examine ways to bridge the divide between public health and urban planning disciplines.

Dr. Chinchilla’s work has been published by MIT Press and the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. She has received research funding from the Pricilla King Gray Public Service Center, Sagalyn and Hack Dissertation Grant, and the Veteran Administration Research Enhancement Award Program.

Dr. Chinchilla earned her doctorate in Urban Studies and Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also holds a master in City and Regional Planning and bachelor degrees in Social Welfare and Mass Communications from the University of California, Berkeley.

Specializations:

Homelessness, Affordable Housing, Social Determinants of Health

Links to HPRI Research

• Stemming the Rise of Latino Homelessness: Lessons from Los Angeles County

Michael Cousineau

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

cousinea@med.usc.edu

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

robynnco@usc.edu

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

• Roadmap to a Unified Measure of Housing Insecurity

Rashida Crutchfield

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

rashida.crutchfield@csulb.edu

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

• 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 P. 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

culhane@upenn.edu

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

• The 2016 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress, Part 1

• The 2016 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress, Part 2

• Patterns of Multisystem Service Use and School Dropout Among Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth-Grade Students

• Gender Differences in Factors Associated with Unsheltered Status and Increased Risk of Premature Mortality among Individuals Experiencing Homelessness

• Employment and Earnings Trajectories During Two Decades Among Adults in New York City Homeless Shelters

Soledad De Gregorio

Doctoral Candidate
USC Price School of Public Policy

mdegrego@usc.edu

Soledad De Gregorio is a PhD candidate in Public Policy and Management at USC and Doctoral Research Assistant at the Price School for Social Innovation. Her research employs quantitative methods to study social policies, particularly those designed to improve K-12 education. Soledad is currently studying homelessness within schools, alternative pathways into teaching, and how families cope with rent burden. Her research interests include the effects of homelessness and neighborhood factors on schools, teachers, and students. Prior to joining Price, she worked as a consultant for the World Bank and in the nonprofit sector developing programs with disadvantaged communities in Latin America. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and a Master’s degree in Public Policy from UCLA.

Specializations:

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

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

Adrienne Dellinger

Senior Researcher Associate
Vital Research

ADellinger@vitalresearch.com

Adrienne Dellinger is a Senior Research Associate 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 is a Ph.D. Candidate 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

Earl Edwards

Doctoral Candidate 
UCLA Graduate School of Education and Informational Studies

eedwards02@ucla.edu

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

Daniel Flaming

President
Economic Roundtable

danflaming@economicrt.org

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

• All Alone: Antecedents of Chronic Homelessness

• Escape Routes: Meta-Analysis of Homelessness in L.A.

• Assessing Accuracy of L.A.’s Homeless Count

• Prioritizing Which Homeless People Get Housing Using Predictive Algorithms

• Where We Sleep: Costs when Homeless and Housed in Los Angeles

Joelle Greene

Director
Harder + Company

jgreene@harderco.com

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

Benjamin Henwood

Assistant Professor
USC Dworak-Peck School of Social Work

bhenwood@usc.edu

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

• Geriatric Conditions Among Formerly Homeless Older Adults Living in Permanent Supportive Housing

• Investigating Health Risk Environments in Housing Programs for Young Adults

• Longitudinal effects of permanent supportive housing on insomnia for homeless adults

• Transitions to Housing in Los Angeles: Health & Services

• Applying a prevention framework to address homelessness as a population health issue

Sarah Hunter

Senior Behavioral Scientist
Rand Corporation

shunter@rand.org

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

• Feasibility of a computer‑assisted social network motivational interviewing intervention for substance use and HIV risk behaviors for housing first residents

• Evaluation of Housing for Health Permanent Supportive Housing Program

• A computer-assisted motivational social network intervention to reduce alcohol, drug and HIV risk behaviors among housing first residents

Andrea Iloulian

Senior Program Officer
Conrad N. Hilton Foundation

andrea@hiltonfoundation.org

Andrea Iloulian manages 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)

mislam@lahsa.org

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

Chris Ko

Director, Homeless Initiatives
United Way of Greater Los Angeles

cko@unitedwayla.org

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

Randall Kuhn

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

kuhn@ucla.edu

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

Josh Leopold

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

jleopold@urban.org

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

• 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

• How Would Terminating USICH Affect Efforts to End Homelessness?

• How the Federal Government is Working to End Homelessness

• Costs Associated with First-Time Homelessness for Families and Individuals

Michael Ludwig

Data Analyst
Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA)

mludwig@lahsa.org

Mike Ludwig is a data analyst in the Data and Research Department at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. At LAHSA, he performs data analysis for a variety of initiatives, supports the work of researchers and stakeholders, and builds tools to enhance data collection, quality and analysis. Prior to working at LAHSA, he held a Data for Good Fellowship in Los Angeles City Controller Ron Galperin’s office, delivering insights to the Los Angeles City Controller and City on issues such as curbing excessive overtime and capitalizing on City real estate holdings. He’s interested in applying machine learning and data science techniques to research questions affecting homelessness policy.

Specializations:

Homelessness

Applied Machine Learning, Data Science Techniques

Angelique Montgomery

Program Coordinator
Home for Good Team, United Way
amontgomery@unitedwayla.org

Angelique Montgomery is the Program Coordinator with the Home For Good Team at the United Way, focusing on data and research initiatives. She is the project lead of the HACademy, an organized group of regional data coordinators who work to improve data quality and data capacity for all SPA regions to help better understand homelessness. In addition, she works closely with the policy team on the Home For Good Team in establishing best data practices for the A Bridge Home initiative.

Prior to being at United Way, Angelique was a recent graduate from the Master of Social Work program with a concentration in Non-Profit Management and Business Innovation. She spent 3 years working for the Integrated Substance Abuse Treatment to End Disparities Research Team at USC that aimed to increase program capacity and evaluation for outpatient substance abuse programs in Los Angeles County. In her spare time, she is a program evaluation consultant for substance abuse treatment and wellness programs that focus on serving racial and ethnic minorities in Los Angeles County.

Jennifer Mosley

Associate Professor
University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration

mosley@uchicago.edu

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

• Homeless Services Continuums of Care: Findings From a National Survey

• 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

• Keeping the Lights On: How Government Funding Concerns Drive the Advocacy Agendas of Nonprofit Homeless Service Providers

Saba Mwine

Senior Program Manager
Corporation for Supportive Housing

saba.mwine@csh.org

Saba Mwine has over 16 years of experience spearheading projects throughout the nation to measure, investigate and enforce equal access to housing. She has played multiple roles from project designer and civil rights investigator to management consultant and race equity educator. In addition to her civil rights work, Saba is a professional actor, committed to weaving the universal language of art performance in all settings. Since her start with CSH in 2017, she secured foundation funding for and designed CSH’s first racial equity programming, external trainings and community initiatives—inclusive of qualitative research. In addition to liaising with national and local partners on race equity, Saba employs multimodal interactive approaches in directing CSH’s Los Angeles Supportive Housing Institute—a provider intensive to enable quality supportive housing throughout LA County.

Prior to CSH, Saba worked with the Urban Institute and the Housing Rights Center to train and direct field researchers for the federal Housing Discrimination Study (HDS) 2012 in Los Angeles County and later worked as management consultant to multiple HDS major cities across the country. Subsequently, she conducted the HDS Disabilities in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and consulted again with the Urban Institute for the project design and implementation of the pilot study HDS Lesbian, Gay, Transgender. Additionally, at the Housing Rights Center, Saba worked as lead investigator for the Fair Housing Initiatives Program—Regional in 6 SoCal cities. Saba began her work in race equity as a fair housing tester and subsequent manager for the LA based, women owned firm Progressive Management Resources. She is also a qualified theatre professor and talented adult educator. Saba holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Performance from California State University, Long Beach and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Wheaton College in Massachusetts.

Specializations:

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

Michael Nailat

Program Officer
United Way of Greater Los Angeles

mnailat@unitedwayla.org

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 Price Center for Social Innovation; USC Price School of Public Policy

gpainter@usc.edu

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 Sol Price Center for Social Innovation and 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

• What happens to household formation in a recession?

• Housing Formation and Unemployment Rates

David Phillips

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

david.phillips.184@nd.edu

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

Eric Rice

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

ericr@usc.edu

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

• Do HIV risk and prevention behaviors change over time among adults in permanent supportive housing?

• Social networks and substance use after transitioning into permanent supportive housing

• A Grounded Theory of the Relationship Between Ontological Security, Mental Health, Social Relationships, and Identity Formation for Young Adults in Supportive Housing

• Investigating Health Risk Environments in Housing Programs for Young Adults

• Homeless but Connected: The Role of Heterogeneous Social Network Ties and Social Networking Technology in the Mental Health Outcomes of Street-Living Youth

Charles Robbins

Principal
Health Management Associates

crobbins@healthmanagement.com

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

Janey Rountree

Executive Director
California Policy Lab at UCLA

janey@cpl.ucla.edu

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

• Health Conditions Among Unsheltered Adults in the U.S.

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

mark_silverbush@abtassoc.com

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 2016 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress, Part 2

James Sullivan

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

james.x.sullivan.197@nd.educ

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

Links to HPRI Research

• Does emergency financial assistance reduce crime?

Patricia St. Clair

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

pstclair@usc.edu

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

Max Stevens

Director of Research and Evaluation
Los Angeles County Chief Executive Office

mstevens@ceo.lacounty.gov

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

• Cost Avoidance Yielded Through Participation In The Long Beach Homeless Veterans Initiative

Emmy Tiderington

Assistant Professor
Rutgers University School of Social Work

emmy.tiderington@rutgers.edu

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

haliltoros@yahoo.com

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

• 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

• Cost Avoidance Yielded Through Participation In The Long Beach Homeless Veterans Initiative

• Prioritizing Which Homeless People Get Housing Using Predictive Algorithms

• Where We Sleep: Costs when Homeless and Housed in Los Angeles

Marc Tousignant

Senior Program Director
Enterprise Community Partners

mtousignant@enterprisecommunity.org

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

Staff Psychologist; Director of Division of Mental Health Services Research
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA); Yale University School of Medicine

jack.tsai@yale.edu

Jack Tsai, Ph.D. is a Staff Psychologist for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine. In the VA, he is a direct clinical provider for the Critical Time Intervention program and Director of Research for the Errera Community Care Center. At Yale, he is Director of the Division of Mental Health Services Research. Dr. Tsai has received federally funded grants and published over 150 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 the Homeless. He teaches and supervises interns, residents, and fellows in the VA, Yale, and surrounding universities. In his spare time, he enjoys scuba diving, climbing, Brazilian jiu jitsu, basketball, and international travel.

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

• Lifetime and 1-year prevalence of homelessness in the US population: results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions-III

• Addressing Veteran Homelessness to Prevent Veteran Suicides

• Needs of homeless veterans: 5 years of the CHALENG Survey 2012–16

• Public exposure and attitudes about homelessness

• Systematic review of psychosocial factors associated with evictions

Till Von Wachter

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

tvwachter@econ.ucla.edu

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

Christopher Weare

Lecturer
Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley
weare@berkeley.edu

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

• Counting the Homeless: Improving Knowledge of the Unsheltered Homeless Population

Suzanne L. Wenzel

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

swenzel@usc.edu

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

• Do HIV risk and prevention behaviors change over time among adults in permanent supportive housing?

• Social networks and substance use after transitioning into permanent supportive housing

• A Grounded Theory of the Relationship Between Ontological Security, Mental Health, Social Relationships, and Identity Formation for Young Adults in Supportive Housing

• Longitudinal effects of permanent supportive housing on insomnia for homeless adults

• A pilot of a tripartite prevention program for homeless young women in the transition to adulthood

Brenda Wiewel

Director
USC Initiative to End Homelessness

frankens@usc.edu

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