The Right to the City: Homelessness and Advocacy

Jennifer Egan is the author of several novels and a short story collection. Her 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach, a New York Times bestseller, was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was chosen as New York City’s One Book One New York read. Her previous novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was recently named one of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Her new novel, The Candy House, a companion to A Visit From the Goon Squad, was named one of the New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2022 and one of President Obama’s favorite reads of the year. She has served as President of PEN America and twice as Artist-in-Residence in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has taught courses in 19th and 20th Century literature. Her year-long reporting on street homelessness and supportive housing in New York City was published in The New Yorker in September of 2023.

Alex Strada is an artist and educator based in New York City whose work spans installation, film/video, sound and orality, printed media, participatory workshops, and public practice. Through a research-based approach grounded in transdisciplinary collaboration and public engagement, her projects reimagine systems of power and create platforms for collectivity, civic agency, and political transformation. Since 2022, she has served as the Public Artist in Residence with the NYC Department of Homeless Services and the Department of Cultural Affairs. Recent solo exhibitions include the Queens Museum, NYC; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Aldrich Contemporary Museum of Art, CT; Times Square Arts, NYC; and Project Row Houses, Houston. Strada has received grants from the Graham Foundation, Artadia, NYFA, NYSCA, Rema Hort Mann Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Her work has been featured in the New Yorker, BOMB, New York Times, Hyperallergic, and on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show. She holds an M.F.A. in Visual Arts from Columbia University and is an alumnus of the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program. Strada is the Fine Arts Civic Engagement Fellow and faculty at the Pratt Institute.

Will Watts is the Deputy Executive Director for Advocacy at Coalition for the Homeless where he is responsible for overseeing the organization’s policy and litigation work as well as its monitoring of New York City’s shelters run by the Department of Homeless Services. Prior to joining the Coalition, Will practiced law in Los Angeles where he most recently served as the Director of Community & Economic Justice at Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, advocating for justice on behalf of disenfranchised and low-income communities, including unhoused individuals, veterans, immigrants, domestic violence survivors, and formerly incarcerated individuals. Prior to Legal Aid, Will held a variety of positions including as a faculty member at UCLA School of Law, the Directing Attorney for the Homelessness Prevention Law Project at Public Counsel, and as a real estate partner at DLA Piper LLP.