About

The Center for Homeless Inquiries (CHI) seeks to enhance public awareness of the causes of homelessness and to identify effective and humane and solutions to the housing crisis.  We inform policy makers, program administrators, and the general public by conducting and disseminating research, providing analytic trainings, and developing innovative strategies for helping people to become stably housed. 

 

Staff

Dr. Christopher Weare, President

Christopher Weare, Ph.D. has over 25 years of experience in public policy as a researcher, professor, and practitioner.  He currently is a lecture at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and a member of the research committee at USC Homelessness Policy Research Institute.  Previously, he was the Manager of Data Analytics and Research at Sacramento Steps Forward, the lead agency for Sacramento’s Homelessness Continuum of Care and a research professor at the USC Price School of Public Policy where he led major, grant-funded research projects on citizen engagement, e-government, and performance management.  Prior to being at the USC Price School, Dr. Weare conducted research at the Public Policy Institute of California.  There he authored a report on the 2001 California Electricity Crisis that Sacramento Bee Columnist Dan Weintraub called "the best thing written about the crisis I have seen." 

 Dr. Weare also has extensive experience as a practitioner.  Most recently, he advised Mayor Garcetti’s administration in Los Angeles on a major set of management reforms to create an innovative, data-centric management culture within City operations.  With Mayor Hahn’s and Villaraigosa’s administrations he developed a system of participatory budgeting for Los Angeles that remain in place to this day. 

 Dr. Weare received a BA in Government from Harvard University and a MPP and Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley.  He lives in Sacramento with his wife, who is a USC Professor, and his two teenagers.  They all enjoy taking advantage of a house in Bolinas to commune with the beautiful California coast.