Zack Almquist
University of Washington, WA·Social Science·Early-career
Cities and health agencies need accurate counts of people experiencing homelessness to decide where money and services go. Yet people living on the street and in shelters are hard to reach, and the current federal method, the HUD Point-in-Time count, is a one-night tally.
- Fields
Social Science
Mathematics & Statistics
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
homelessness
hard-to-reach populations
population estimation
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Estimate the size and demographics of hard-to-reach homeless populations online, using generalized network scale-up methods and network sampling with people who access the internet via smartphones, free Wi-Fi and library computers.
- Sample homeless populations in person using respondent-driven sampling, in which participants recruit peers, and space-based sampling, then compare all four methods with the federal HUD Point-in-Time count.
- Extend spatial network models to test how geography and demographics shape the social networks of people experiencing homelessness and how those networks affect when homelessness begins and how long it lasts.
- Build updatable network simulation models of how information spreads online and offline, and how disease spreads offline, through homeless communities.
More about the research
Many homeless people now go online through free Wi-Fi, smartphones and library computers. That opens new ways to collect data, and also to learn about the social ties that may shape how long someone stays homeless.
Why it matters
More accurate counts of homeless populations could help city officials and healthcare leaders direct housing and health resources where they are needed. Knowing how social support networks affect the length of homelessness may suggest new support strategies. It could also show better ways to share information, and help plan for disease spread in homeless communities.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Lesley Weaver
University of Oregon, OR·Social Science
Compare physical health and health risk factors across four groups of people experiencing houselessness—unsheltered, encampment, temporary shelter and permanent supportive housing—to find which settings drive health differences.
Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert
Stanford University, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Build models linking the opioid epidemic and homelessness to the spread of HIV, hepatitis C and related infections among people experiencing homelessness.
Jaideep Srivastava
University of Minnesota, MN·Computer Science
Investigate how information spreads through online social networks and develop tools that trace content back to its original sources and identify authentic information.
The school
University of Washington: 81 labs on PI Pages, $1.7B a year on research, 694 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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