USC's homelessness initiative
Housing stability and human flourishing in Los Angeles
Homelessness is the biggest challenge facing Los Angeles in our time; what is USC doing about it?
USC Housing LA connects research, practice, policy, and community to build the future of housing solutions. It shares how students, staff, and faculty are changing housing, homelessness, and related issues across Los Angeles and beyond.
- 8+Partner centers, programs & student organizations
- 2028Olympic and Paralympic Games focus LA's future
- 1Front door to USC's housing work
From fragmentation to coordination
One of the greatest challenges facing homelessness response systems is not a lack of effort, expertise, or investment. It is fragmentation. Across Los Angeles, public agencies, healthcare systems, housing providers, researchers, service organizations, philanthropy, and neighborhood leaders are all working on different dimensions of the same crisis, often within separate funding streams, data systems, and institutional mandates.
USC Housing LA is designed to help address that. Rather than functioning as a single program or centralized institute, it serves as a connective platform: linking disciplines, translating research into implementation, strengthening relationships across sectors, and aligning knowledge, practice, and community insight toward shared outcomes.
It brings together partners from across the university, including the Homelessness Policy Research Institute, USC Street Medicine, Public Exchange, the Center for Economic and Social Research, Neighborhood Data for Social Change, the Center for AI and Society, Trojan Shelter, Project Lux, and more, spanning the full continuum of understanding, preventing, and responding to homelessness.
How the initiative works
- Understanding structural conditions. Housing policy analysis, behavioral health research, longitudinal population studies, and the Los Angeles Homeless Count: work that makes visible both the root conditions shaping housing instability and the predictable pathways through which homelessness occurs.
- Strengthening systems & community. Street medicine, integrated care, implementation science, and partnerships with public agencies, philanthropy, faith communities, and people with lived experience, bridging divides between healthcare, housing, and frontline organizations.
- Advancing knowledge & the next generation. PATHS, ethical AI and predictive analytics, and fellowships that train the researchers, clinicians, technologists, policymakers, and civic leaders who will carry this work forward.
Our partners
Research centers, clinical programs, and student organizations working on housing and homelessness across USC.
- Public ExchangeUSC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesConnects public and private decision-makers with USC research capacity, running applied projects on food insecurity, environmental health, and homelessness prevention.
- Center for Economic and Social ResearchUSC DornsifeHome of the Understanding America Study and LABarometer, CESR runs the longitudinal survey research that tracks how Angelenos are actually living.
- Neighborhood Data for Social ChangeUSC Price School of Public Policy · Lusk CenterAn open data platform and research program documenting neighborhood conditions across Los Angeles County, and the lead author of the annual SOLACHAN report.
- Homelessness Policy Research InstituteUSC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social WorkHPRI has convened groups across Los Angeles, and beyond, to discuss issues related to homelessness for nearly a decade. It now brings that expertise home to lead the USC Housing LA initiative at the university.
- USC Street MedicineKeck School of Medicine of USCBrings health care directly to people living unsheltered in Los Angeles, meeting patients where they are rather than waiting for them to reach a clinic.
- Center for AI and SocietyUSC Viterbi School of Engineering & USC Social WorkApplies artificial intelligence to social problems, including work on housing allocation, outreach, and services for people experiencing homelessness.
- Trojan ShelterA student-run shelter in Koreatown offering deeply discounted housing to college students aged 18 to 26 across the LA area, not just USC students.
- Project LuxStudent volunteers who help people apply for the benefits they are entitled to, such as Medi-Cal, CalFresh, and cash assistance, at the LA Mission.
Latest research & news
- Jun 2026Wellbeing, Space and Society · Public Exchange
Distress signal: Self-storage facilities as sentinel spaces for community stress and mental health
About 1 in 12 US adults rented a self-storage unit in the past year, and a quarter of them did so because of a serious life disruption, most often losing housing. The study argues self-storage facilities are an overlooked place to reach people before a crisis deepens.
- Dec 2025USC Dornsife News · Public Exchange
Food insecurity remains high in L.A. County, but who it affects is changing
One in four Los Angeles County households reported difficulty affording enough food in 2025, essentially unchanged from 2024, amid high living costs, wildfire recovery, and shifting federal food assistance policy.
- Dec 2025USC Dornsife News · CESR
LABarometer releases its latest look at livability and affordability in Los Angeles
The 2025 LABarometer findings cover livability, affordability, and well-being, with particular attention to the LA wildfires and immigration enforcement actions.
Stay in the loop
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Most recent issue: Summer 2026: Unlock this month's research gems