Understanding and Addressing Homelessness 

My research examines the nature, causes, and consequences of the homelessness crisis and critically evaluates the strategies used to address it.

Doubling Up as “Hidden Homelessness”

One arm of my research focuses on “doubled-up homelessness,” or staying with others because of housing loss or economic hardship. Doubling up is a common form of housing insecurity and often leads to sheltered and unsheltered homelessness. However, it’s hard to measure, so policymakers often leave it out of strategies to address the homelessness crisis. My research helps document the dynamics of doubling up to help inform homelessness prevention.

In collaboration with co-authors at the Chicago Coalition to End Homeless, I developed a method to estimate doubled-up homelessness in the total population using American Community Survey microdata. The method and analyses at the national level are published in Housing Policy Debate. We estimate that 3.7 million people in the U.S. were doubled-up in 2019, with higher shares of Latinx and rural individuals than are typically found in counts of people in shelters or living unsheltered.

In a second paper in Journal of Urban Affairs, we apply the measure to examining the structural determinants of homelessness. This study shows that rates of doubling up are positively associated with rental housing costs, unemployment, income inequality, and lower access to cash public assistance.

In policy & advocacy reports:

National Alliance to End Homelessness, State of Homelessness 2024

The Full Spectrum of Latino Homelessness: Understanding and Addressing Doubling Up

Estimate of People Experiencing Homelessness in Chicago, 2023

In the news:

PBS News Hour: Why this widespread form of homelessness is often overlooked and unsupported

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Hidden housing instability: 3.7 million people live in doubled-up households

Chicago Tribune: An estimated 65,611 people in Chicago experienced homelessness in 2020, coalition report says

National Low Income Housing Coalition: New Research Shows More that More than Three Million Individuals are ‘Doubled-Up.’

Portland State University Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative: Invisible Homelessness Counts

Racism and Homelessness

Structural racism is a major cause of homelessness in the U.S., as evidenced by the stark racial disparities in who experiences it. Systems of advantage based on race shape risk for homelessness, the health consequences of experiencing it, and the effectiveness of interventions. To fully understand and address homelessness, we have to understand the historic and ongoing barriers to housing for people of color.

My research examines how to reduce racial inequities in homelessness, and, as result, advance health equity.

Publications

Race Matters in Addressing Homelessness: A Scoping Review and Call for Critical Research

Racial Inequity and Homelessness: Findings from the SPARC Study

The Intersection of Homelessness, Racism, and Mental Illness

Works in progress

Chapters of my dissertation, Racialized Homelessness in the United States: Structural Causes and Community Response (Dissertation of the Year, Society for Community Research and Action, 2024):

  • “Structural Correlates of Black, White, and Latine Doubled-up Homelessness.” (Forthcoming in Social Problems)

  • “Structural Racism and Black-White Homelessness Disparities in the United States”

  • “Community Predictors of Black, White, and Latine Doubled-up Homelessness in Metropolitan Areas”

  • “Racial Equity in Homelessness Response: A Qualitative Study in Two Urban Communities.”

More Research (Select Works)