surveys Archives - Home

Thomas Knight

NVRC Admin — Wed, 15 May 2024 04:52:55 +0000

Thomas Knight (he/him) is a member of the Lived Experience Advisory Board of Silicon Valley’s (LEABsv) Executive Committee. He brings a unique blend of corporate IT expertise, nonprofit board experience, and a deep understanding of housing insecurity. After living and working remotely in an RV with his family, Thomas experienced over a year of homelessness living in shelters and on the street. This journey drives his passion for leveraging technology to create innovative solutions for the unhoused community. He advocates for greater lived experience representation in addressing systemic change within the homelessness sector and aims to serve on additional nonprofit boards and collaborate with government agencies.

The post Thomas Knight appeared first on Home.

Peggy Lee Kennedy

NVRC Admin — Wed, 15 May 2024 04:50:38 +0000

Peggy is 3rd generation Venice, California resident, daughter of a human and environmental rights family, and co-founder of the Venice Justice Committee in 2001.

The Venice Justice Committee (VJC) monitors, documents, and exposes human rights violations. VJC documentation has been the evidence for a proud list of civil rights lawsuits.

The core VJC focus has been on criminalization: exposing how it harms, who it harms, critiquing the causes, and working for change.

Since 2014 the Venice Justice Committee has led a free infraction defense clinic for unhoused people with civil rights attorneys. It began conducting surveys in 2021 as a possible tool for change.

The first VJC Vehicle Housed Survey was April 2022 and it was used in a lobby attempt for the population. (See attached) Unfortunately, VJC monitored the area being cruelty swept in January 2023 and the population completely removed or displaced using a special LACity tow operation in August 2023 by new city administration.

The post Peggy Lee Kennedy appeared first on Home.

Sam Lutzker

NVRC Admin — Fri, 10 May 2024 03:00:51 +0000

Sam Lutzker is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at UCLA whose dissertation research examines the rise of vehicle residency and homelessness in the United States, including both residents’ perspectives and attempts by government and civil society groups to resolve “the problem” as divergently understood. As part of the After Echo Park Lake Research Coalition (based at the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality & Democracy), Sam co-authored a widely cited policy report on the mass displacement of unhoused people from Echo Park Lake, as well as an article in Radical Housing Journal and an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle. More recently, Sam co-authored a policy report on homelessness in recreational vehicles (i.e., RVs) in San José, CA with Graham Pruss and the Lived Experience Advisory Board of Silicon Valley. He was a co-founder of Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid and has written about state- and city-level homeless policies for the Los Angeles Times and Knock LA. At UCLA, Sam co-founded the Urban Sociology Working Group, for which he serves as a coordinator. He enjoys mentoring undergraduates who are engaged in research on a variety of topics. When not working, Sam loves mountain biking and eating his way through LA with friends.

The post Sam Lutzker appeared first on Home.

Graham J. Pruss, PhD

NVRC Admin — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 23:29:01 +0000

Dr. Graham J. Pruss is an anthropologist who studies vehicle residency in North America. His research focuses on the intersection of lived experiences, social services, legal systems, and public policy development. Graham joined the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California San Francisco’s Center for Vulnerable Populations as a Postdoctoral Scholar in 2020, after receiving his PhD from the University of Washington Department of Anthropology. Dr. Pruss mixes participatory, qualitative, and quantitative methods to better inform policy makers and convey complex research to non-academic audiences. Graham was inspired to focus on the habitation of vehicles in public space by extensive travel with his family in vehicles during his childhood and close relationships with long-term vehicle residents throughout his life. He brings diverse perspectives to research on housing adaptation and instability, as a former social service outreach specialist for vehicle residents (2013-2015) and previous recipient of social welfare programs as a homeless youth and teen parent in the 1990s.

The post Graham J. Pruss, PhD appeared first on Home.