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Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

A Portrait of the Unhoused Population of Seattle in 2023

  • When: Friday, October 10, 2025 (12:30 – 1:30PM)
  • Where: 360 Parrington Hall and on Zoom 

We look forward to welcoming a team of researchers from the University of Washington (UW) Department of Sociology, led by CSDE Affiliate Nathalie Williams and including CSDE Trainees Hugo Aguas, Mingze Li, Aryaa Rajouria, as well as Yuanxi Li, Brandon Morande, and Caroline Teague, on Friday, October 10, in Parrington Hall 360 and on Zoom.  All presenters are at the University of Washington and affiliated with the Sociology Department. This seminar is co-sponsored by the Population Health Initiative.

Surveys of people experiencing homelessness traditionally focus on questions related to their housing statuses, often excluding broader topics asked of the general population. As a result, research frequently fails to capture the full humanity and lived experiences of this diverse community. This Sound Data project seeks to address this gap by conducting a survey on a representative sample of unhoused respondents on a variety of subjects about social life and well-being. The report presents the results from a survey collected during Spring 2023 in Seattle, WA. This findings clarify the community’s demographic composition, highlights patterns in homelessness duration, eviction histories, forced displacement, and resource access, broadens our understanding of employment statuses, uncovers trends in physical, mental, and behavioral health conditions, and provides insight into the diversity of respondents’ religious, political, and national backgrounds.

Nathalie Williams is Professor of Sociology at Affiliate at CSDE. Her research focuses on migration and developing survey and analytical methods for hard-to-reach populations and complex demographic systems.

Hugo Aguas is a PhD student in Sociology and a CSDE Trainee whose research focuses on housing insecurity, homelessness, and poverty scholarship. He also works as an After-Hours Supervisor at Downtown Emergency Services Center (DESC) in Seattle, bridging academic research with frontline systems.

Mingze Li is a Sociology PhD student and a CSDE Trainee who has also received the CSDE Graduate Certificate in Demographic Methods. His research interests encompass migration, immigration, labor studies, and policy.

Yuanxi Li is an undergraduate student majoring in Sociology and Informatics. She is committed to utilizing mixed-methods research to address critical issues related to social justice and digital inequalities.

Brandon Morande is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology. His research broadly examines the relationships between poverty governance, neighborhood change, and placemaking in urban spaces.

Aryaa Rajouria is a doctoral student in Sociology and a CSDE trainee whose research examines how individuals and communities make decisions in times of uncertainty, particularly in relation to migration, displacement, and mobility.

Caroline Teague is a fourth-year undergraduate research assistant pursuing a B.A. in Sociology. Her work is primarily focused on survey methods, housing and homelessness, and transportation and urban planning.

 

Center for Aging, Climate, and Health (CACHE) September 2025 Newsletter

CACHE facilitates research and fosters collaboration among a wide-range of researchers working at the nexus of aging, health and climate change through targeted interdisciplinary training, information sharing, and investments in research support. To view their September 2025 Newsletter that contains upcoming CACHE Seminars, Call for Papers, CACHE Seminar Recordings, and more, follow this link: CACHE September Newsletter.

Turner Publishes Article on Cross-State Differences in Self Directed Services for Older Adults

CSDE Trainee Natalie Turner and co-author Carli Friedman recently authored a study, titled “Examining Cross-State Differences in Self Directed Services Provided Through 1915(c) Waivers for Older Adults”, published in the Journal of Aging & Social Policy. Self-Direction is a service delivery model that allows older adults to select their services and who provides them. This mixed-method study identifies cross-state differences in how states are allowing Self-Direction among the 60 Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) 1915(c) waivers that serve older adults using Framework Analysis and descriptive statistics. Descriptive findings showed significant cross-state differences in Self-Direction design, with high variation in goals set for participation, projected spending on eligible services, and number of eligible waiver services. Read more.

“Fit for Habitation Only by the Negro:” Draining the Wretched Lowcountry Swamp, 1895-1915 – Morgan Vickers

When: Friday, October 24, 2025 at 12:30 pm

Where: 360 Parrington Hall and on Zoom

We are looking forward to hosting CSDE Affiliate Morgan Vickers from the University of Washington on Friday, October 24 in Parrington Hall 360 and on Zoom. This seminar is co-sponsored by the Population Health Initiative.

In 1895, South Carolina produced its post-Reconstruction Constitution, a document explicitly designed to disenfranchise Black South Carolinians through the implementation of restrictive voting laws, the invention of new counties, and the redefinition of a “person” to only include white men. Just five years later, in 1900, the State passed its First Amendment, which legally mandated the condemnation and drainage of all swamplands in the State, ecological spaces most commonly inhabited by poor Black people. The drainage effort was spearheaded by a man named James Cosgrove, the self-proclaimed “Apostle of Drainage in the South,” who argued that “no longer will we permit our lands to remain in a condition fit for habitation only by the negro,” and, instead, it was the project of the turn-of-the-century State to “make our waste places the fairest and dearest spot in all the world, [a] fit dwelling place for the white man.” This paper centers around a key chapter in my forthcoming manuscript, Wretched: Damned Swamps, Black Haunts, and the Draining of the Lowcountry, 1865-1945, which highlights the racial ecologies of Cosgrove’s Sanitary and Drainage Commission between 1895 and 1915. I demonstrate how the constitutionalization of Black damnation and the codification of ecocide worked in tandem to transform the racial, spatial, and political condition of South Carolina, with lasting impacts on our present world.

Dr. Morgan P. Vickers is an Assistant Professor of Race/Racialization in the Department of Law, Societies, & Justice, an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, and an affiliate faculty member with the Center for the Study of Demography and Ecology and the Center for Environmental Politics at the University of Washington. Their research illuminates racialized ecologies, 20th-century infrastructure projects, the social construction of race, and eco-social repair. They are centrally concerned with how racialized populations and their environments have been historically defined using the same language of damnation, pestilence, and threat in order to destroy both through legal and extralegal maneuvers

Berridge Joins NASEM Panel to Discuss Importance of AI Governance in Gerontology

CSDE Affiliate Clara Berridge (Social Work) published a forum article in The Gerontologist with USCF’s Anita Ho, titled “Why AI Governance Should Be a Focal Issue for Gerontology”. Drawing on that work, Berridge spoke about the importance of protecting privacy for older adults and applying a sociotechnical perspective as a panelist for a National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine’s (NASEM) Hauser Policy Impact Fund Webinar series, “From Longevity to Vitality: Leveraging Technology for Thriving in Later Life.” The webinar can be viewed here. (Berridge presents at 1:8:50).

Jones Publishes Article on Evaluating Electronic Health Record-Support Social Support Scores in Breast Cancer 

CSDE External Affiliate Salene Jones (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center) and co-authors recently published an article in Population Health Management. In breast cancer, clinicians add data on social support to patient electronic health records (EHRs) often in free text notes, but those data may be challenging to use for population health initiatives or research purposes. Jones and co-authors evaluated different methods of creating the total score for EHR-Support forming the basis for a tool that can be used in population health research and management. Results showed that concept groups from unstructured EHR data and structured data were able to be combined to generate a score that was associated with objective and subjective measures of social support. Read more.