Matthew Fowle

Matt Fowle’s research uncovers how public policies and institutions can either reinforce or undermine housing security and well-being among low-income households of color. His dissertation, “The Color of Homelessness: The Causes, Reproduction, and Consequences of Racial Inequality in Homelessness,” examines four crucial questions on racial inequality in homelessness: 1) What do we know about it? 2) What causes it? 3) What reproduces it? and 4) What are its consequences? Employing qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods, he interrogates the extent to which racial disparities in homelessness are both a key outcome of inequities produced by public policies and social institutions and a primary factor in reproducing downward intergenerational mobility and premature death among households of color. Other collaborative projects focus on the housing impacts of interventions that reduce or eliminate criminal justice debt for low-income individuals.

Matt entered the Evans School Ph.D. program in Public Policy & Management in 2017. Prior to joining the program, he earned an MPA from the Evans School and an MSc from the University of Oxford. During this time, he worked for a local philanthropic organization investing in youth-focused institutions and served as a research assistant for the Evans Policy Analysis Research Group (EPAR). While living in the UK he worked as an assistant policy officer for local government and as a human rights advocate for a nonprofit organization. Matt is a co-founder of HomelessDeathsCount.org, a community research project to collect nationwide data on mortality among people experiencing homelessness.