Housing Rights Mobilization
My solo-authored work is motivated by the question of whether and how the housing disenfranchised can mobilize for housing rights. In this thread of research, I highlight the importance of poor people’s movements and push back on the assumption that the housing insecure and the unhoused are powerless.
Current Projects:
My master’s thesis, undertaken at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, explores how those impacted by pandemic-related economic and policy changes mobilize for housing rights. I employ in-depth qualitative interviews with housing service providers and housing insecure and unhoused individuals to demonstrate how identity shapes involvement in the movement for housing rights in Columbus, Ohio. My findings reveal varied capacities for mobilization across identity groups, demonstrating how housing service providers can act as intermediaries in the housing rights movement. This analysis combines insights from housing sociology and social movements literature. This article is currently being prepared for submission at Sociological Forum.
My dissertation project is a comparative case study of the “Stop the Sweeps” Movement in Los Angeles, California and Seattle, Washington. The “Stop the Sweeps” Movement has emerged in response to the resurgence of large-scale encampments in American cities over the last 20 years, most prominently on the West Coast. While some cities tolerate and actively support large-scale encampments, others have ramped up criminalization with increasing police sweeps. Through qualitative interviews with housing rights activists (n=24), unhoused or recently housed individuals (n=20), and political players (n=24) involved with sweep enactment, I explore the place-specific elements that shape both encampment sweeps and movements to stop the sweeps.
Housing Policy in the Commodified Market
While my solo-authored work focuses on housing rights movements, I am also interested in how contemporary housing policy exacerbates or improves housing commodification. For this research, I take a collaborative approach, working with graduate student colleagues to combine skillsets and subdiscipline or interdisciplinary expertise.
Current Projects:
One project looks at the impact of pandemic-related eviction policy on the day-to-day lives of tenants through a case study of an eviction courtroom in Columbus, Ohio. Using ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews, we demonstrate the courtroom’s allegiance to neutrality and efficiency, ultimately undercutting tenant’s rights and public health concerns in the face of a global pandemic. This paper was recently published at Socius.
I am coauthor on a second project that examines how federal policies aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence, such as the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), shape housing provision for these individuals. In this project, we employ in-depth qualitative interviews with individuals working in the areas of victim services, information systems, and community-level referral processes to better understand how these intermediaries are impacted by federal policies, ultimately affecting housing provision for domestic violence survivors.
I am working with a Los Angeles-based colleague at University of Southern California on a project evaluatingLos Angeles’s new Inside Safe Initiative, a response to growing unhoused encampments in the city. While the initiative is touted as a more compassionate alternative to sweeps, only a small fraction of those moved to hotels through this initiative have successfully been housed. This study examines the objective and execution of Inside Safe operations (what happens outside?) as well as the living conditions and resource availability at Inside Safe placement locations (what happens inside?) from the perspective of “enrollees.” This project will provide meaningful insight into the new policy trend of creating more “compassionate” sweeps.
Teaching as Research
Throughout graduate school, I have also developed an interest in teaching-focused research. In future research, I hope to bridge my substantive research interests with my passion for improving student experience. As many of my courses already include an aspect of community-based sociology, I plan to explore the implications of these learning mechanisms for student experience and student learning.
Current Projects:
In collaboration with two graduate student colleagues, I developed a project on ungrading, or alternate assessment, an approach to student assessment that decenters the use of letter grading in the classroom. Over the course of a year, we implemented an alternate assessment technique in our courses and collected both qualitative and quantitative data on students’ experiences. We find that the implementation of ungrading resulted in a measured decrease in student stress and anxiety as well as an increase in self-reported learning as compared to traditionally letter-graded classes. A major goal of this research is to provide other sociology instructors a useful mechanism for improving student experience and decreasing inequality in the classroom. This paper is currently under review (R&R stage) at Teaching Sociology.