The Regional Homelessness Authority is pleased to announce that Dr. Graham J. Pruss, PhD., will be joining us to provide pro bono research and data collection support to our Community Impact team during the first half of 2022.
Dr. Pruss will focus on developing a research plan and data collection methodology for vehicle residents as part of our qualitative research engagement to be conducted in March, as well as developing data collection recommendations for a By Name List. This work builds on his experience using mixed methods to research unhoused and displaced communities, vehicle residency, social services, and public policy development.
Dr. Pruss 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. He brings diverse perspectives to anthropological and ethno-archaeological research in these topics, as a former social service outreach specialist for vehicle residents (2013-2015) and as a previous recipient of social welfare programs as a homeless youth and teen parent in the early 1990s.
He directed the Vehicular Residency Research Program (VRRP) at Seattle University from 2012 to 2013, where field researchers mapped anonymous vehicle residence settlement patterns correlated with parking restrictions and enforcement. Dr. Pruss developed a vehicle residence identification methodology during this research, which was adopted for King County Point-in-Time counts of unsheltered people. He presented on the state of vehicle residency to Seattle City Council in 2012, and in 2015 joined All Home (the previous Continuum of Care coordinating agency) where he served on the Executive Board, Governing Board, and as co-Chair of the Policy Committee.
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Pruss.
