Chris Hess, Erin Carll, and Kyle Crowder, Department of Sociology, UW
Ariel Rokem, Bryna Hazelton, and Tim Thomas, eScience Institute, UW

This week, CSDE and the eScience Institute will host presentations showcasing collaborative work on housing and homelessness by researchers from both the Department of Sociology and eScience Institute at UW.

CSDE trainees Chris Hess and Erin Carll, along witth CSDE affiliate Kyle Crowder, will provide a short presentation on their collaborative work utilizing administrative data from the Seattle Housing Authority and King County Housing Authority to examine patterns of mobility among housing-voucher recipients. This will be followed by a presentation by eScience researchers, Ariel Rokem, Bryna Hazelton, and Tim Thomas, who have linked multiple administrative data sources to understand patterns of entries into, and exits out of, homelessness. These projects share important sources of administrative data and have benefited from collaboration on the establishment of data sharing agreements and other logistical components, providing solid examples of the kinds of work that can be facilitated by CSDE’s nascent UW Data Collaborative.

Affiliate James Anderson, Research Professor at the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, co-authored a study in the January issue of Pacific Science that assesses the success of a feral cat control program on Rota Island. Rota Island—part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in the northwestern Pacific—is home to the critically endangered Mariana crow, which the feral cat program was designed to protect. The authors found that the program reduced cat abundance in the first year and a half, after which point the population grew slightly and then was maintained. Given these results, the authors suggest employing a strategy that focuses on areas with high crow activity, rather than one that seeks to control the feral cat population across the entire island. 

CSDE Director Sara Curran was quoted in a New York Times story on Jorge Garcia, the Michigan resident and father of two who was deported to Mexico last week after almost three decades in the U.S. Garcia, who came to the country illegally when he was just 10 years old, has been trying to obtain a green card since 2005, confronting numerous difficulties along the way. “The interviews and processing of green cards is extraordinarily slow and challenging,” said Curran, also a Professor at the Jackson School of International Studies. “Not only could you put yourself at risk, but if you don’t have a good enough attorney, then it’s pretty hard to get through the system without being caught up by a technicality.” As Curran goes on to discuss, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), which President Obama created at the end of his first term, does not protect individuals like Garcia—who are above its age limit—from deportation. 

Affiliate Kam Wing Chan, Professor of Geography, was quoted in a recent New York Times article highlighting the predicament of poor children in rural China, as represented by Fuman—a third-grade boy in the province of Yunnan—who has come to be known as “frost boy” after photos of him covered in frost following his long, cold journey to school swept the internet. Fuman is one of millions of rural children who have been left behind by their parents for jobs in cities, and must often fend for themselves. Long commutes to the rural schools that remain open are just one in a series of difficulties these children face on a daily basis. “There are so many similar incidents of hardship for left-behind children in China every day,” said Chan, who believes the government could provide support to help families move to urban areas together.