EXPERTS

The founding director of the Center on Evidence-based Solutions to Homelessness is Dr. Jill Khadduri. Jill is a principal associate in the Social & Economic Policy Division of Abt Associates and a former director of the Policy Development Division of the Office of Policy Development and Research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). She has been co-principal investigator for the Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) (together with Dr. Dennis Culhane) since the AHAR started in 2007. She also co-edited Towards Understanding Homelessness, a compendium of papers sponsored by HHS and HUD that documented the research base on homelessness as of 2007.

Her research has focused on the intersection of homelessness and housing assistance, and she is the author of chapters on that subject in Ellen and O’Flaherty, How to House the Homeless (Russell Sage 2010) and in Burnes and DiLeo, eds., Ending Homelessness:  Why We Haven’t; How We Can (Lynne Reiner Publishers 2016).

Jill is a senior member of the Abt research teams conducting the Family Options Study, a randomized controlled trial of interventions for homeless families, and a follow-up study that seeks to further understand the rapid re-housing approach to serving people experiencing homelessness. She was principal investigator for a study of how public housing authorities attempt to serve homeless people. She is a senior advisor to the evaluation of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s efforts to end chronic homelessness in the Los Angeles region and to the evaluation of the HHS Transitional Living Program for Homeless Youth.

During her years at HUD, Jill was involved in the implementation of the earliest HUD-funded homeless assistance programs. She recently authored a history of HUD, a political and institutional record of the 50-year period following its founding in 1965, based on the literature on housing policies and programs and on interviews with 30 senior-level participant-observers.

EVIDENCE BASE TOPICS:
Rental Housing Subsidies and Homelessness
Trends and Patterns of Homelessness

AFFILIATION:
Abt Associates

CONTACT:

Contact Jill

Joy Moses is the Director of the Homelessness Research Institute at the National Alliance to End Homelessness. For nearly 20 years, she has worked to reduce poverty and advance racial justice. Before joining the Alliance, she was a private consultant and analyst with the Center for American Progress. Within those roles, she managed projects and developed research reports and other forms of analysis. Joy began her career as a legal advocate, representing the interests of children and youth through her work at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and Stanford University.

EVIDENCE BASE TOPICS:

AFFILIATION:
National Alliance to End Homelessness

CONTACT:

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

EVIDENCE BASE TOPICS:
Youth Homelessness
Children and Family Homelessness

AFFILIATION:
Westat

CONTACT:

Dr. Dennis Culhane is a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is also the Dana and Andrew Stone Chair in Social Policy and Co-Principal Investigator for Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy. Dennis also serves as Director of Research for the National Center for Homelessness Among Veterans at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Dennis’ primary area of research is on the use of data to understand the nature of homelessness and design cost-efficient policy approaches to serving individuals and families experiencing homelessness. His work in this area has positioned him as an early innovator in the use of administrative data for research and policy analysis, particularly for populations and program impacts which are difficult to assess and track. Dennis’ work has resulted in federal legislation requiring all cities and states to develop administrative data systems for tracking homeless services in order to receive HUD funding. His work has also been instrumental in a national shift in how cities address chronic homelessness and family homelessness.

Dennis’ recent research includes studies of vulnerable youth and young adults, including those transitioning from foster care, juvenile justice, and residential treatment services. For the past 15 years, he has also served as Co-Principal Investigator, with Dr. Jill Khadduri, of the Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress. Together with Dr. Cortes, he is leading efforts to develop a DataHub that will make data on homelessness more accessible and useful to practitioners.

EVIDENCE BASE TOPICS:
Chronic Homelessness
Trends and Patterns of Homelessness
Veteran Homelessness
Homeless services system

AFFILIATION:
University of Pennsylvania

CONTACT:

Contact Dennis

Dr. Daniel Gubits is a principal associate in the Social & Economic Policy Division of Abt Associates. One of Abt’s leading methodologists, Daniel conducts research in the areas of housing, homelessness, economic self-sufficiency, and disability policy. Daniel’s expertise is in econometric modeling, data analysis, and random assignment program evaluation.

Daniel is director of analysis for the Family Options Study, a 12-site experiment comparing the success of different strategies to house families experiencing homelessness. The study followed 2,300 families for three years to understand how the strategies affected housing stability, self-sufficiency, family preservation, and adult and child well-being. He is currently leading an effort to document the evidence base on rapid re-housing and will conduct further analysis of data from the Family Options Study to better understand the effectiveness of that approach to serving families experiencing homelessness.

Daniel also leads impact analysis work for the Social Security Administration’s Benefit Offset National Demonstration (BOND) project, a random assignment impact evaluation that is testing the effect of work incentives for recipients of social security disability income.

In previous work, Daniel led the analysis of employment, earnings, and benefits receipt for the Effects of Housing Vouchers on Welfare Families study, another random assignment impact evaluation. He also co-authored the impact and implementation reports for the Supporting Healthy Marriage study, conducted for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

EVIDENCE BASE TOPICS:
Rapid Re-Housing
Children and Family Homelessness

AFFILIATION:
Abt Associates

CONTACT:

Contact Daniel

Dr. Dana Eser Hunt is a highly-regarded expert on crime, substance abuse, illegal drug use and drug treatment whose research includes the use of both quantitative methods and ethnography.

Dana is a principal associate in the U.S. Health Division of Abt Associates. At Abt, she managed the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM II) project — involving collection of data on drug use, treatment needs and drug market activity from a sample of 5,000 arrestees in 10 metropolitan U.S. counties each year. She also led the redesign of the original ADAM program funded by NIJ from 1997-2001, collecting data in 35 counties from arrestees within 48 hours of arrest. The projects were the only federal drug surveys able to validate self-reported drug use through testing and provide a real-time picture of drug use and drug market trends in the nation.

Dana manages a diversity of projects, including a national evaluation of an eleven-city SAMHSA grant initiative integrating primary care, mental health, prevention, and substance abuse treatment for persons at risk or living with HIV and AIDS; a 125 grantee cross site evaluation of minority treatment programming for HIV; and the evaluation of a post incarceration program for high risk male offenders 18-24 years old.

She is also the principal investigator on the Hilton Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning project for the Hilton Foundation evaluating and coordinating the work of over 35 grantees implementing drug and alcohol screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) for adolescents and young adults.

Dana has numerous publications and presentation on issues of methodology, crime and justice, and drug treatment and is a regular reviewer for grant funding in the Department of Justice.

EVIDENCE BASE TOPICS:
Criminal Justice Reentry and Homelessness

AFFILIATION:
Abt Associates

CONTACT:

Contact Dana

Gretchen Locke is a principal associate in the Social & Economic Policy Division of Abt Associates. She specializes in evaluation research on programs for people who have special needs, including people who have disabilities and people who are at risk of homelessness or experiencing homelessness. Her research has focused on individuals with chronic patterns of homelessness, permanent supportive housing, and the intersection of the housing and health systems.

Currently, Gretchen is co-principal investigator on a study of the Section 811 Project Rental Assistance program, a new approach to providing affordable housing and services to very low income people with disabilities in subsidized housing also occupied by people with and without disabilities.

She serves as a subject matter expert for an evaluation of technical assistance provided to states in order to strengthen partnerships between housing and Medicaid agencies and better meet the needs of homeless and disabled adults. She also directs two large national studies of a health care occupation training program for low income, entry-level workers.

Gretchen completed a multi-site study for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on linking housing and Medicaid-funded services in permanent supportive housing. She also directed a study of development and operating costs and tenant and neighborhood outcomes of permanent supportive housing in Connecticut and a random assignment study of the HomeBase homelessness prevention program for families in New York City.

Together with Jill Khadduri, she was a co-editor of Towards Understanding Homelessness, a compendium of papers documenting the research base on homelessness published by HUD and HHS in 2007.

EVIDENCE BASE TOPICS:
Permanent Supportive Housing
Homelessness Prevention
Chronic Homelessness

AFFILIATION:
Abt Associates

CONTACT:

Contact Gretchen

Stephen Metraux is Associate Professor at the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration of the University of Delaware, where he directs the Center for Community Research and Service.

Steve’s research on homelessness has included pioneering work on using administrative and survey data to better understand the impacts and costs of homelessness across a range of services systems. More generally, his research has examined how various institutional contexts intersect with homelessness, including the military, jails and prisons, and child welfare. He has worked extensively with public agencies and non-profits on using available data to better understand and evaluate their homeless, housing and related services and the people who use them.

Steve’s current research focuses on unsheltered homelessness and local responses to homelessness encampments, with projects funded by the Arnold Foundation and the City of Philadelphia. He is also continuing work on veteran homelessness that he started during his tenure as an Analyst with the VA’s National Center for Homelessness Among Veterans.

EVIDENCE BASE TOPICS:
Criminal Justice Reentry and Homelessness

AFFILIATION:
University of Delaware

CONTACT:

Contact Stephen

As a professor at Vanderbilt University, Dr. Marybeth (Beth) Shinn focuses on ways to prevent and end homelessness and create opportunities for groups that face social exclusion.

She is co-principal investigator of the Family Options Study, a 12-site experiment comparing the success of different strategies to house families experiencing homelessness. Conducted together with colleagues at Abt Associates, the study followed 2,300 families for three years to understand how the strategies affected housing stability, self-sufficiency, family preservation, and adult and child well-being. Beth and students also analyzed qualitative interviews with 80 of the families across four study sites to understand families’ experiences in the homeless service system, how they make housing decisions, and why so many parents become separated from their children.

One of Beth’s particular areas of expertise is developing tools to predict who among populations in deep poverty and experiencing various forms of psycho-social distress will become homeless. With her students, she has developed targeting models to help New York City direct homeless prevention services available through the HomeBase program to the people most likely to become homeless without them. With colleagues at the Urban Institute, she is also studying whether supported housing can avert child out-of-home placement among families where homelessness contributes to risk.

Past collaborations with community organizations and research institutes include an experimental study of the Pathways Housing First intervention with adults who experience both chronic homelessness and serious mental illness, a survey of older adults in poverty to understand why some become homeless, an evaluation of New York City’s street count, and an experiment to determine whether rapid re-housing with transitional services fostered positive outcomes for children who were homeless with their families.

EVIDENCE BASE TOPICS:
Children and Family Homelessness
Homelessness Prevention

AFFILIATION:
Vanderbilt University

CONTACT:

Contact Beth

Brooke Spellman is a national leader in conducting research and developing strategies to improve policy and programmatic responses to homelessness and poverty.

A principal associate in the Social & Economic Policy Division of Abt Associates, she has expertise in using Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) and mainstream system administrative data to understand homelessness, patterns of homeless service utilization, client outcomes, and homeless and mainstream system costs. Her work includes strategic planning, facilitation, system- and program-level service delivery, research and evaluation, technical assistance and training, performance measurement, outcomes-based funding and grants management for local government and nonprofits related to homelessness, the Continuum of Care planning processes and HMIS.

Brooke led a HUD-funded evaluation of the efficacy of the HUD Rapid Re-housing for Homeless Families Demonstration; was actively involved in the Family Options Study, a random assignment study of interventions for homeless families; and is actively involved in the evaluation of the efforts by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation to end chronic homelessness in the Los Angeles Region.

She has extensive knowledge of and past experience in managing homeless systems and HUD grant programs for housing and homeless assistance programs in large urban and metropolitan county areas.

EVIDENCE BASE TOPICS:
Rapid Re-Housing
Chronic Homelessness
Homeless services system

AFFILIATION:
Abt Associates

CONTACT:

Contact Brooke

Michelle Wood is a principal associate in the Social & Economic Policy Division of Abt Associates.

Michelle has more than 28 years of experience managing large-scale national program evaluations and applied social science research. Michelle serves as Project Director for the Family Options Study, which examines the effects of various combinations of housing and services for homeless families on five aspects of family well-being: housing stability, self-sufficiency, adult well-being, child well-being, and family preservation.

The study randomly assigned nearly 2,300 families who sought assistance from emergency shelters in 12 communities to one of four intervention groups. The team collected baseline data, conducting periodic tracking interviews, and undertook follow-up survey data collection 20 and 37 months after random assignment. Michelle also leads a long-term tracking study with the Family Options Study to conduct tracking interviews with the study families 72 months after random assignment.

Michelle is a Co-Principal Investigator for an in-depth study of program models and implementation and participant experiences in rapid re-housing. The Understanding Rapid Re-housing Study is conducting a systematic review of research on rapid re-housing, collecting detailed information from all rapid re-housing programs, and is conducting additional analysis on the Family Options Study.

Michelle also led a study to examine service costs in supportive housing programs and is working on a team to investigate Medicaid access, utilization and costs for households that use permanent supportive housing.

EVIDENCE BASE TOPICS:
Children and Family Homelessness
Rental Housing Subsidies and Homelessness
Rapid Re-Housing

AFFILIATION:
Abt Associates

CONTACT:

Contact Michelle