Joseph Wallerstein is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and a doctoral fellow with the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative. His research interests center on homelessness, housing insecurity, and poverty alleviation. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, he was in the midst of designing a project on makeshift and mobile housing (which he hopes to return to at some point). He has since pivoted to a project on organizational responses and adaptations to the pandemic, focusing on nonprofit homeless shelters, missions, and likeminded agencies. The first phase of the project draws on dozens of interviews with directors and other organizational staff members.

Project: Nonprofits in Crisis: The Case of Homeless Shelters