Sandra J. Newman, Ph.D.
Director and Professor of Policy Studies
Joint appointment, Department of Sociology
Joint appointment, Department of Health Policy and Management, Bloomberg School of Public Health

"The problem is not so much what we don't know; it's what we think we know that just ain't so." This paraphrase of a quote by Mark Twain captures as well as anything why I am a social scientist, policy analyst, and teacher. For more than 20 years, I’ve focused on housing policy for vulnerable populations, including welfare families, the homeless, persons with severe mental illness, and the frail elderly. Americans agree that decent, affordable housing is a basic necessity of life and, since 1949, have accepted this as a policy goal. But in more than five decades of trying, we still haven't found a way to deliver on this promise. What's more, many of the programs now operating are studies in laudable objectives but unanticipated consequences. If we are ever to be effective, we need to get back to the basics: What are we trying to achieve with housing assistance? What is government's proper role? These are the kinds of questions I am addressing in my current work. In the same vein, my core course in policy analysis teaches our students to address such fundamental policy questions across a broad range of domestic policy.

Dr. Newman holds an M.U.P. and Ph.D. in urban planning from New York University. She was a Fulbright Senior Fellow at the Australian National University and a Visiting Scholar in the research office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Newman's research is interdisciplinary, and focuses on the intersection of housing, employment, welfare and health. Her recent projects have been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the Ford Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Fannie Mae Foundation, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Rockefeller Foundation.