Curtis Smith
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About Curtis
Smith's research focuses on homelessness, inequality, social policy, and social movements. Smith’s overarching themes in writings include methodological issues related to “point-in-time” homeless counts, health issues among Hispanic immigrants in low-income housing, public policy, social movements, and activism related to the homeless. Smith serves as a board member of a national conference called the Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology.
Contributions
Publications
Discusses the challenges of studying marginalized populations, such as people experiencing homelessness and immigrants, due to methodological and ethical concerns. Advocates for simplifying IRB processes to facilitate research on vulnerable groups and proposes guidelines derived from social scientific studies to aid researchers in obtaining IRB approval and gathering crucial data.
Reveals the creative and ambitious methods that social service providers use to house their homeless clients despite the conflictual conditions posed by the policies and institutions that govern the housing process.
Reflects on the challenges of reaching hidden populations.
Highlights results from our recent survey of public housing residents living in the U.S. Mexico border region. Informs our interdisciplinary (public health, education, environmental engineering, sociology) efforts to improve health and educational equity in our community, and provide ripe opportunities for policy advocacy.
Measures mental illness among individuals experiencing homelessness in a border city and compares it to the general housed population. Uses original data from a homeless survey conducted in El Paso, Texas.
Explores point in time methodology focusing on visible street homeless individuals and those in shelters while neglecting the “marginally housed” or less visible homeless who live in automobiles or temporarily stay with friends and extended family. Explains how they replicated HUD’s PIT count, but additionally targeted the marginally housed to improve traditional methods of counting the homeless in various ways.
Describes social service workers’ creation and negotiation of what we term "fitting stories" according to Michael Lipsky’s concept of street-level bureaucrats who exert considerable discretionary power in the performance of their roles as they negotiate between homeless clients and institutional gatekeepers. Elaborates on how outreach workers respond to barriers to qualifying their clients for housing.
Examines the Emergency and Transitional Shelter Population (ETSP) with the help of the BAH Calculator —which includes what are commonly referred to as “homeless” people.
Compares Hispanic and non-Hispanic homeless populations in El Paso, Texas, collected in “traditional homeless spaces” as well as in non-traditional spaces where Hispanics may be more heavily represented. Finds Hispanics to be underrepresented when compared with the general population of El Paso.
Discusses how protestors during the Occupy movement in El Paso, Texas, argued that the homeless exemplified an important segment of the 99%, which gave the homeless people a different identity. Elaborates on how homeless people even credit the activities they carried with the Occupy El Paso movement for helping them recover from addiction and their eventual attainment of housing.