Democracy Matters - Episode 55: Ungoverned and Out of Sight
Addressing homelessness in the United States
News
SUMMARY: In this episode, we talk with Dr. Charley Willison, a National Institutes of Mental Health Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard University Department of Health Care Policy, about the politics and governance of homelessness in the United States and what can be done to address the national homelessness crisis.
Despite some four decades of research into best practices and policies, homelessness has increased nationally and reached crisis levels in the United States. As a result of the pandemic, people are at an even greater risk of housing insecurity. In a new book, Ungoverned and Out of Sight, Dr. Charley Willison, a National Institutes of Mental Health Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard University Department of Health Care Policy, explores how strategic decentralization and delegation of homeless policy governance have created fragmented systems that make it challenging to address homelessness in the United States. Dr. Willison emphasizes improving participatory equity of persons experiencing homelessness or at risk to improve policy design and implementation. Dr. Willison also offers recommendations to improve homeless policy and governance systems.
Links in this episode:
- Ungoverned and Out of Sight
- HUD Point-in-Time Count and Housing Inventory Count
- Continuums of Care system
- Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act
- The Privileged Few: How Exclusionary Zoning Amplifies the Advantaged and Blocks New Housing—and What We Can Do About It
- Neighborhood Defenders: Participatory Politics and America's Housing Crisis