Research Agenda

My research examines recent shifts in housing markets, housing insecurity and urban civil society through new computational tools that I have developed. I am also an active collaborator on many research teams, and in separate but related work, I have explored U.S. service and advocacy organizations generally, and applied my interest in social networks to research on interpersonal social networks and the social determinants of health. More details are available below.

Landlords and urban housing movements after the great recession

My dissertation contributes to recent policy debates about the U.S. housing crisis. In the first part of my dissertation, I intervene in recent debates about the role of large and institutional landlords in rental markets by “de-anonymizing” landlords and property owners with new computational tools. Undertaking the first complete, longitudinal study of rental ownership in any U.S. city, I show that large and institutional landlords have not increased their share of the rental market in central Texas since 2010. However, I then show that rental ownership is rapidly “formalizing” in central Texas, indicated by a rise in organizationally complex and publicly obscuring ownership strategies across landlords of all sizes. You can read some recent media coverage of my work here. Research on the effects of landlord formalization on tenure quality and rental costs are ongoing.

In my second research stream, meanwhile, I intervene in recent debates about the importance of community organizing for reducing housing insecurity. Upzoning and additional housing supply are usually thought of as the main solutions to rising housing costs, but these solutions may ignore the specific problems of low-income renters, and community advocacy may play an important role in diminishing the most extreme forms of insecurity, such as eviction and displacement. I develop a series of techniques for documenting housing movement coalitions across U.S. cities, which advocate on behalf of renters struggling with rising rents, landlord abuse, and displacement. My work shows that formal housing movement coalitions are now widespread across U.S. cities, including in conservative states, and that housing movement coalitions have grown in response to both rising economic insecurity in cities and favorable political opportunities. Finally, I show that such urban housing movements also have a causal effect in reducing extreme forms of housing insecurity. Examining neighborhoods in 75 U.S. cities from 2000 to 2016, I employ a causal identification strategy to show that community organizing accounts for declines in eviction filing in large U.S. cities after the Great Recession.

Exploring civil society and social networks with emerging methodologies

Beyond my dissertation project, I am engaged in research on civil society and pro-social behavior and research on social networks generally.

Under Dr. Pamela Paxton, I have contributed to a multi-year research project funded by AmeriCorps that seeks to understand the impact of service and advocacy organizations on various social problems in the United States. I am also affiliated with the Life in Frequencies Health Disparities (LifeHD) Research Lab directed by Dr. Bridget Goosby and Dr. Jacob Cheadle, where I have contributed to work on the social determinants of health and interpersonal social networks.

My work on civil society spans diverse topics. I have published sole and first-authored work on urban governance networks (Social Networks), on the causal effect of national service programs on anti-poverty work (Administration & Society), and on the use of natural language processing to study how organizations understand and confront violence against women (Social Currents). 

With Faith Deckard and the LifeHD Lab at UT-Austin, meanwhile, I have developed psychometric network approaches to evaluate the simultaneous consequences of interpersonal racial discrimination for multiple dimensions of mental health (Social Psychology Quarterly). With Sumin Lee and Jacob Cheadle, I am also currently engaged in research on social isolation and friendship ego-networks during the COVID-19 pandemic.