Research Council

Dennis Culhane is the Dana and Andrew Stone Professor of Social Policy at the School of Social Policy and Practice at The University of Pennsylvania. Culhane’s primary expertise is in the field of homelessness and assisted housing. From July 2009 – June 2018 he served as Director of Research at the National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He is currently working with multiple states and counties to address the problem of homelessness among seniors and people with disabilities. He is a leader in the integration of administrative data for research and directs Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy (AISP), a center that promotes the development of integrated data systems by state and local governments for policy analysis and systems reform. The AISP network consists of 43 states and large counties that link administrative data across education, housing, workforce, justice, health, and social service programs.

Joy Moses is the Alliance’s Vice President of Research and Evidence. Throughout her career, 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. Early in her career, Joy was a legal advocate, representing the interests of children and youth through her work at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. She is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and Stanford University.

Rebecca Brown, MD, MPH is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. As a clinician-investigator, Dr. Brown focuses on improving functional status among socioeconomically vulnerable older adults, including people experiencing homelessness. Functional status refers to the ability to perform daily activities that are important for quality of life and independence, such as bathing, dressing, and preparing meals. Dr. Brown received her medical school training at Harvard Medical School. She completed residency in internal medicine at University of California, San Francisco, followed by fellowship in geriatric medicine at Harvard Medical School, including an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. She returned to UCSF for a research fellowship in geriatric medicine before joining the faculty of the UCSF Division of Geriatrics in 2013. In 2018 she joined the Division of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Melissa Chinchilla is a Project Scientist in the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles; a Health Services Researcher with the VA Greater Los Angeles (GLA) Health System Research Center of Innovation (COIN): Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation, and Policy; and an Associate Investigator with the VA Rehabilitation Research and Development (RR&D) Center on Enhancing Community Integration for Homeless Veterans (THRIVe). Prior to joining the VA, Dr. Chinchilla was a Research Scientist with AltaMed Health Service’s Institute for Health Equity, one of the largest Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in the nation, serving over 400,000 low-income patients in Southern California.  

Dr. Chinchilla’s research focuses on the social determinants of health, with an emphasis on housing and homelessness. She has conducted research on the community integration outcomes of formerly homeless Veterans housed through VA’s largest homeless program, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-VA Supportive Housing (VASH). Her research also focuses on increasing our understanding of Latinx homelessness including barriers to homeless services connection and culturally relevant engagement strategies. Her work has been published in various journals including Cityscape, the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, and the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. She previously served as a Commissioner for the Los Angeles Homelessness Services Authority, one of the largest continuums of care in the nations.  

Dr. Chinchilla earned her doctorate in Urban Studies and Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, holds a Master of Science in Health Policy and Management from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Master of City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a Los Angeles native. 

Dr. Melissa Chinchilla is a Project Scientist in the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles; a Health Services Researcher with the VA Greater Los Angeles Health System Research Center of Innovation: Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation, and Policy; and an Associate Investigator with the VA Rehabilitation Research and Development Center on Enhancing Community Integration for Homeless Veterans. Her research focuses on the social determinants of health, with an emphasis on housing and homelessness. Among other work, her research examines Latinx homelessness including barriers to homeless services connection and culturally relevant engagement strategies. Dr. Chinchilla earned her doctorate in Urban Studies and Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, holds a Master of Science in Health Policy and Management from University of California, Los Angeles, and a Master of City and Regional Planning from University of California, Berkeley.

Gregg Colburn is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed University Professor and Associate Professor in the Runstad Department of Real Estate in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. He publishes research on topics related to housing and homelessness and is co-author of the book, Homelessness is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns. Gregg is also co-author of the recently released book, Affordable Housing in the United States. His research has been featured in leading media outlets, including The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Economist, Bloomberg, and National Public Radio. 

Gregg holds an M.B.A. from Northwestern University, and a M.S.W. and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Prior to academia, he worked as an investment banker and private equity professional. At the University of Washington, Gregg teaches classes in housing, urban economics, and finance. Gregg serves as co-chair of the University of Washington’s Homelessness Research Initiative and is a member of the National Alliance to End Homelessness Research Council.  

Jill Khadduri is a national expert on homelessness, the homeless services system, and the intersection between homelessness and housing assistance policy. During 24 years at Abt Associates, she served as the principal investigator for HUD’s Annual Homelessness Assessment Reports to Congress, starting with the development of data reporting standards for the Homeless Management Information System. She is a senior advisor to the ongoing Family Options Study that followed families with children over a 12-year period after they were found in emergency shelters and compared the impacts of giving them access to a Housing Choice Voucher with the impacts of other interventions. In 2024-2025, Dr. Khadduri was the principal investigator for a study that evaluated the outcomes and impacts of a program in Washington State that provides short-term rent subsidies to individuals with disabilities experiencing or at risk of homelessness. Dr. Khadduri is co-author, with Marybeth Shinn, of a comprehensive assessment of homelessness, In the Midst of Plenty: homelessness and what to do about it. Before joining Abt Associates in 2000, Dr. Khadduri was director of the Division of Policy Development in HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research.

Dr. Deborah K. Padgett, a professor at the Silver School of Social Work at New York University, has a PhD in anthropology and post-doctoral fellowships in public health and mental health services. Dr. Padgett is known for her expertise in qualitative/mixed methods and is the author of two textbooks in this area. She is an expert on the ‘housing first’ approach to ending homelessness and is first author (along with Ben Henwood and Sam Tsemberis) of a book on housing first (Oxford University Press, 2016). Since 2010, she has been involved in research and services for homeless ‘pavement dwellers’ in India and works with colleagues at The Banyan in Chennai. Since 2023, Dr. Padgett has been collaborating on an unconditional cash transfer experiment with homeless persons in Los Angeles led by Dr. Benjamin Henwood of the University of Southern California. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare and former President of the Society for Social Work and Research.

After living in nine different states, Janey developed a passion for tackling some of the most complex challenges facing American cities, from gun violence to police reform to homelessness. During her four-year tenure in the Chicago Mayor’s Office, she witnessed firsthand the power of data and research to transform how public agencies and systems serve people. With that vision in mind, she helped found the California Policy Lab in 2017.

Janey draws on her experiences as a government executive, criminal defense lawyer, nonprofit employee, and public school teacher to lead staff, develop partnerships with government leaders, and launch research projects at CPL. Improving policies and programs to better address the homeless crisis in Los Angeles is a large focus of her work. She is a member of the National Alliance to End Homelessness Research Council, Deputy Director of the Homelessness Policy Research Institute, and also serves on the advisory committee for the California Interagency Council on Homelessness. She is the co-author of several CPL reports on homelessness in Los Angeles, including research focused on predicting and preventing homelessness.

Prior to joining CPL, she was Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Public Safety where she had direct oversight of the Chicago Police Department, Fire Department and Office of Emergency Management. She also developed policy on a wide set of issues, including police reform, public safety operations, domestic violence, and youth violence prevention in Chicago. To make violence prevention policies more effective, Janey engaged a diverse coalition of partners, including agencies working on school climate, behavioral health, and workforce development. During her tenure in Chicago, Janey worked closely with researchers to evaluate violence prevention programs and scale up the ones that were proven effective.

Before working in the Chicago Mayor’s Office, she served as senior counsel and Firearms Policy Coordinator in Michael Bloomberg’s administration, and helped lead Mayors Against Illegal Guns. In that role she led undercover investigations of illegal gun sales at gun shows and online gun trafficking. She has practiced law, taught high school, and worked in the nonprofit sector. She holds a B.A. from Williams College and a J.D./LL.M from Duke Law School.

Marybeth (Beth) Shinn is a research professor at Vanderbilt University who studies how to prevent and end homelessness. She co-led the first three years of the 12-site Family Options experiment examining approaches to ending family homelessness, was the evaluator for the initial study of the Pathways Housing First program for individuals with serious mental illnesses and developed a model used by New York City to target its homelessness prevention services. Her 2020 book with Jill Khadduri, In the midst of plenty:  Homelessness and what to do about it , surveys research to show that we know how to end homelessness, if we devote the necessary resources to doing so. Current projects include screen for homelessness in Vanderbilt’s emergency room and an unconditional cash transfer to help families with infants leave shelters in New York City. Beth served on Nashville’s Affordable Housing Task Force and Nashville’s Homelessness Planning Council.

Dr. Tsai serves as Research Director for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans and is a Professor of Public Health at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. He is a licensed clinical psychologist with an additional master’s degree in clinical psychopharmacology. He has served as a direct clinical provider in a posttraumatic stress disorder clinic and on a critical time intervention team. He has received federal grants and published extensively on topics related to homelessness, severe mental illness, trauma, and integrated care models. He serves as Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Social Distress and Homelessness and npj Mental Health Research.