Henry Love is a developmental psychologist and educator with 10 years of experience as a practitioner and researcher in implementing, developing, testing, and evaluating innovative programs to improve the lives of BIPOC families and children living in extreme poverty. He specializes in qualitative narrative research as well as participatory action research methodologies. Love has worked closely with the municipalities of New York City and Oakland/Berkley to address systematic challenges facing students experiencing homelessness. He also has experience working on several federally funded projects for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
In his role as a Co-Principal Investigator and Senior Site Lead for Pilot Evaluations, Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, Love provides overall intellectual guidance to the pilot cities Abt evaluates, ensuring rigor both at each site and across the seven sites, comparability of data across sites, advancing the overall learning agenda, and making sure that Abt is meeting cities’ and MGI’s expectations. As a Technical Assistance Provider for the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Love provides support to Alameda County, CA, on behalf of Abt to improve community-wide responses to youth homelessness and better coordinate across systems (e.g., housing, foster care, justice). He works directly with the county’s Continuum of Care to develop cross-system plans and project implementation.
In his role with HOMEworks (an initiative to end family homelessness funded by Trinity Church Wall Street), Love oversaw and advised the initiatives’ two demonstration projects, on the implementation of participatory action research methods and addressing racial equity, in conjunction with the project’s primary investigators. Love has worked closely with persons that experienced family homelessness and a research advisory group to co-design and implement new approaches to increase housing stability for NYC’s most vulnerable families. As a Program Director, Love oversaw Gateway’s Attendance Matters two-year pilot program funded by The Robin Hood Foundation, which identified, addressed, and managed multiple systemic, intergenerational, and logistical barriers to improve school attendance among approximately 500 homeless children at any point in time. Prior to his work as a researcher, Love spent four years teaching elementary students in some of New York City’s most under-resourced communities in the South Bronx, Central Brooklyn, and Upper Manhattan.