HOME: Health, Opportunity, Mobility, and Equity in Housing

Michael Lens is Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, Chair of the Luskin Undergraduate Programs, and Associate Faculty Director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, UCLA. Professor Lens’s research and teaching explore the potential of public policy to address housing market inequities that lead to negative outcomes for low-income families and communities of color. This research involves housing interventions such as subsidies, tenant protections, and production. Professor Lens regularly publishes this work in leading academic journals and his research has won awards from the Journal of the American Planning Association and Housing Policy Debate.

Margot Kushel, MD is a Professor of Medicine at University of California San Francisco, and Division Chief of the Division of Health Equity and Society and Director of the UCSF Action Research Center for Health Equity and the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative.  She is a practicing general internist at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Her research focuses on the causes and consequences of homelessness, with the goal of preventing and ending homelessness and ameliorating the effects of homelessness on health. She is the Principal Investigator of the California State Study of People Experiencing Homelessness (CASPEH) and numerous NIA funded studies on homelessness in older adults.

Eva Rosen is associate professor at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy, and faculty affiliate in the department of sociology. Her research is focused on social inequality in the urban context. In particular, she studies the intersection between poverty and American housing policy. 

Dolores Acevedo-Garcia is a professor of Human Behavior, Research, & Policy and director of the Institute for Equity in Child Opportunity & Healthy Development (IECOHD) at the Boston University School of Social Work. Her research focuses on the social determinants (e.g. residential segregation, neighborhood inequality, immigrant adaptation) of racial/ethnic inequities in health; the role of social policies (e.g. housing, anti-poverty, immigrant policies) in reducing those inequities; and the well-being of children with special needs. Dr. Acevedo-Garcia uses a child’s rights and health equity perspective, emphasizing that children’s lives have inherent value, and that society should invest in both ensuring their well-being during childhood and supporting their potential as adults.

Dr. Galster provides a wealth of experience in academic, governmental, non-profit, and for-profit circles, both in the U.S. and abroad. He has held positions at the Universities of: Harvard, Cal-Berkeley, North Carolina, Amsterdam, Delft, Glasgow, Mannheim, Western Sydney and The College of Wooster. He served as Director of Housing Research at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC before coming to Wayne State University in 1996. Dr. Galster has been a consultant to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, U. S. Department of Justice, numerous municipalities, community organizations, civil rights groups, and organizations like the National Association of Realtors, American Bankers Association, and Fannie Mae. He has served on the Consumer Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, National Academy of Science review committees, and numerous other leadership positions in community service. Public officials in Australia, Canada, China, France, Scotland, and the U.S. have sought his housing and urban policy consultations.