Bridging urban studies and psychology to tackle housing instability

Working in Philadelphia Landlord Tenant Court last year, fourth-year Stefan Hatch helped people navigate the court process. That experience—along with his earlier work evaluating PHLHousing+, Philadelphia’s monthly cash assistance pilot program—piqued his curiosity: How might he play a role in tackling the issues of homelessness and housing instability?

This school year, he has focused on these issues through senior research projects for his two majors. For urban studies, he looked at whether a change in the time of day people must show up for trial in Landlord Tenant Court impacted how many people don’t show up. Working on an independent study in psychology, he is examining connections between social capital—the value provided by neighbors, friends, and community ties —and housing stability in Philadelphia.

“Stefan is unique in combining an interest in housing conditions with an interest in psychology,” says Department of Psychology professor and chair Sara Jaffee, his mentor on the latter project. “He wants to know whether individuals who are better connected to a broad social network experience more secure housing than individuals who are less well connected.”

Hatch, who is from Truckee, California, added questions related to social capital in monthly surveys of participants in PHLHousing+, which began in fall 2022. Jaffee and Vincent Reina, professor and associate chair in the Department of City and Regional Planning, have been evaluating the program.

The summer after his first year at Penn, Hatch joined Jaffe’s Risk and Resilience Lab, which studies how adverse experiences impact people’s mental health and life experiences. His role was interviewing PHLHousing+ participants about the impact of cash assistance on their well-being and coding interviews for common themes. The opportunity came about through the Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program.

“We were trying to see if they had stories or things to say about different things in their life that might have changed since receiving the cash, like nutrition or being able to move or having access to different resources,” says Hatch.

The experience was his first doing qualitative research, and he says that working with Jaffee made him realize he enjoyed the research aspects of psychology. Hatch says that additional psychology courses taught him about the fundamentals of research methods, which he now brings to his urban studies work.

He is currently interning in the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Planning and Development, helping gather and organize data for the Central Philadelphia Parking Inventory that comes out every five years and working on projects related to electric bikes and speed limits.

“Stefan is curious and open-minded,” says Jaffee. “He’s taken full advantage of interdisciplinary opportunities that Penn offers to learn about housing policy (including internships with urban planning agencies in Philadelphia), master advanced quantitative techniques, and learn about risk and resilience across development through a psychology lens.”

Now in his final semester, Hatch says he would like to stay in Philly after graduation and is keeping options open. “I’m looking for jobs in fields I am interested in—particularly urban planning, housing, or transportation planning—where I can work through research and bring my interdisciplinary lens to something.”