Homelessness Is a Housing Problem

While homelessness is a consistent and growing problem throughout the US, rates of homelessness vary around the country. What explains these variations? Why, for example, are rates are so much higher in Seattle than in Chicago? In this talk, Gregg Colburn, an Associate Professor of Real Estate in the University of Washington’s College of Built Environments, will discuss findings from Homelessness Is a Housing Problem, a book he co-authored that tests a range of conventional beliefs about what drives the prevalence of homelessness in a city, and what types of policies could address the problem. Lyndia Downie, President and Executive Director of Pine Street Inn, the largest homeless service provider in New England, will join Colburn in a conversation moderated by Chris Herbert, the Center’s Managing Director.

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This event is the second in a series of university-wide events on housing and homelessness and is co-sponsored by the Initiative on Health and Homelessness at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab based at Taubman Center for State and Local Government; and the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative.