Tom Byrne, a newly appointed associate professor at the md传媒国产剧 College School of Social Work, says that access to safe, stable and affordable housing is a fundamental prerequisite for a fulfilling and dignified life. Courtesy photo.
Tom Byrne, a newly appointed associate professor at the md传媒国产剧 College School of Social Work, says that access to safe, stable and affordable housing is a fundamental prerequisite for a fulfilling and dignified life.聽
This conviction drives his research, which examines the root causes of homelessness, its impact on health, and the policies that could help make housing more secure.
鈥淎 home is more than just a roof over your head. It鈥檚 a place where you can feel, in the ideal case, safe and secure, where you can relax, and have some privacy with your family,鈥� said Byrne, who joined the faculty in July. 鈥淗aving a safe, stable place to live is a prerequisite for having any semblance of a decent quality of life, and far too many people in this country either don鈥檛 have safe, stable, and affordable housing or don鈥檛 have any housing at all.鈥�
In 2024, more than 771,000 people in the United States experienced homelessness on a single night in January, according to the . This represents a significant increase compared to previous years, with a 12 percent rise from 2022 to 2023 and an 18 percent uptick from 2023 to 2024.聽
Byrne鈥檚 research strengthens the case for treating housing as a social determinant of health and for investing in long-term policy solutions to end homelessness.
One of his most significant studies revealed that high rent levels and a lack of affordable housing drive homelessness at the community level.聽It鈥檚 structural economic factors, he found, and not individual failings, that largely explain geographic differences in homelessness rates.聽
鈥淭he number of people who are paying 30 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent, or more of their income toward rent is at a record high, as is the number of people who are experiencing homelessness,鈥� said Byrne, whose findings were cited by the White House Council of Economic Advisers and featured in the Economic Report of the President under the Biden administration. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really crystal clear from the research that the key driver of homelessness in the aggregate is the lack of affordable housing.鈥�
Byrne has also linked homelessness to poor health outcomes, including increased mortality rates and more inpatient hospital visits. As he put it, 鈥淗omelessness is associated with essentially any adverse health outcome that you can think of.鈥�
Over the past 15 years, Byrne鈥檚 findings have been published in many esteemed journals, including Health Affairs, the American Journal of Public Health, and Housing Policy Debate.
His paper, 鈥淚mpact of the Monetary Value of Housing Assistance on Adult Health Outcomes,鈥� published in Health Services Research in 2023, received the John M. Eisenberg Article-of-the-Year Award.聽聽
And his research into high rates of homelessness among Baby Boomers was featured in a new story for The New York Times that ran under the headline
His longstanding collaboration with the at the Department of Veterans Affairs has shown that providing veterans with housing leads to fewer hospital visits and a lower risk of death. While homelessness in the general population has gone up since the start of his collaboration with the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2009, homelessness among veterans has dropped by more than 50 percent.聽聽
Byrne鈥檚 interest in ending homelessness at large began at BC, when he was an undergraduate student studying economics.聽
From 2004 to 2006, he volunteered at the , md传媒国产剧鈥檚 largest homeless shelter. He served meals to people living at the shelter, he said, and took time to listen to their personal stories.
During a semester abroad at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, Byrne worked alongside outreach workers to connect with people experiencing homelessness in the city of lights.聽
鈥淭hat鈥檚 when I really became interested in homelessness from a social justice perspective,鈥� he said, 鈥渏ust thinking about it as a really fundamental injustice that people didn鈥檛 have a place to live.鈥�
“A home is more than just a roof over your head. It鈥檚 a place where you can feel, in the ideal case, safe and secure, where you can relax, and have some privacy with your family. Having a safe, stable place to live is a prerequisite for having any semblance of a decent quality of life, and far too many people in this country either don鈥檛 have safe, stable, and affordable housing or don鈥檛 have any housing at all.”
After graduating from BC in 2006, Byrne spent a year with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Houston, Texas. It was there that he happened to by Malcolm Gladwell that described the financial benefits of housing homeless people.聽
The article鈥攚hich tells the story of a homeless man in Reno, Nevada, whose use of emergency services, including hospitals, jail, and social services, cost the city $1 million dollars over a decade鈥攃ited research by University of Pennsylvania Professor Denis Culhane, who found that cities could save money by housing chronically homeless people instead of constantly paying for emergency services.
鈥淚f you provide people who are chronically homeless and have serious mental illness with permanent subsidized housing and supportive services, you can offset the cost of doing that via reductions in their utilization of emergency shelter, health care, mental health, emergency departments, and the criminal justice system,鈥� Byrne said. 鈥淪o that really resonated with me having studied economics at BC, because it was basically a story about the opportunity cost of not addressing homelessness.鈥�
Byrne went on to study with Culhane at the University of Pennsylvania, publishing a handful of papers and book chapters with his mentor during his time as a master鈥檚 and doctoral student from 2007 to 2012. For his dissertation, he used quantitative methods to model chronic homelessness in American communities.聽
Back at BC, Bryne is excited to collaborate on research projects with faculty from the School of Social Work, the Carroll School of Management, and Lynch School of Education and Human Development.聽
鈥淚t鈥檚 clear that BCSSW is on the rise and is ascending to be among the top schools of social work,鈥� said Byrne, who spent the previous 11 years as a faculty member at the md传媒国产剧 University School of Social Work. 鈥淪eeing the kind of work that is being done by my new faculty colleagues here is really impressive and wanting to contribute to that was really appealing to me.鈥�
In the classroom, Byrne plans to focus on strengthening the School鈥檚 curriculum in social policy. He cited two strategies to achieve that goal.
- Updating the curriculum: Byrne wants the curriculum to be more flexible and aligned with emerging social policy issues, ensuring students are prepared for the real-world challenges they鈥檒l face in the policy field.
- Building practical skills: He also emphasized the importance of equipping students with concrete, applied skills鈥攕uch as data analysis using administrative records鈥攖o better prepare them for careers in research, advocacy, and public policy work.
His teaching style blends structured lectures with group discussions, he said, focusing on linking hands-on field experience with theoretical concepts taught in the classroom.
鈥淚 encourage students to take an applied approach to what we鈥檙e talking about in the coursework,鈥� said Byrne, who plans to teach Research Methods in Social Work Practice this fall. 鈥淭hat could be, in an active sense, thinking about how they鈥檙e applying some of what we talk about in class to their day-to-day work as emerging social work professionals. But it could also be, in a passive sense, thinking about how what we鈥檙e talking about in social policy courses relates to the work they鈥檙e doing and how it affects the individuals, groups, and communities with whom they鈥檙e working.鈥�